Can we get a jump-start in treating psychosis? Psychosis is an abnormal condition of the mind where symptoms include delusions, hallucinations, talking incoherently and agitation. New research has identified an early vulnerability brain marker for the condition.

Scientists from the University of Montreal and Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center in Canada have found that an exaggerated emotional response from to non-threatening and non-emotional cues predicts the emergence psychotic symptoms in late adolescence.

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The team followed more than a thousand European teenagers from age 14 to 16. These subjects were part of the Imaging Genetics for Mental Disorders or IMAGEN cohort. The reasearchers measured the teenagers’ brain activity while the subjects performed various cognitive tasks to evaluate sensitivity, inhibitory control and the processing emotional and non-emotional content. The teenagers were also asked to fill in self-reported questionnaires on various psychiatric symptoms.

The researchers assessed a group of 14-year-olds who were already reporting occasional psychotic-like experiences and showed that they responded to non-emotional stimuli as though they had strong emotional importance. The researchers then tested whether these functional brain characteristics predicted emergence of future psychotic symptoms in a larger group of 16-year-olds. They found that sic percent of subjects in this group reported having had auditory or visual hallucinations and delusional ideas. These experiences were predicted by brain reactions to neutral stimuli at 14 years of age.

The results of this study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry are consistent with existing hypotheses about how psychosis develops. The research team says that the findings will help detect brain-related abnormalities in teens before psychotic experiences and substance misuse begin to cause significant cognitive impairment and need medical intervention