The Origins of Schizophrenia synthesizes key findings on a disorder that has been increasingly studied over the past decade. Advances in epidemiology, neuroscience technology, and molecular and statistical genetics have identified new putative environmental risk factors and candidate susceptibility genes, recasting schizophrenia's neurobiological nature. Providing the latest clinical and neuroscience research developments in a comprehensive volume, this collection by world-renowned investigators answers a pressing need for balanced, thorough information, while pointing to future directions in research and interdisciplinary collaboration. The Origins of Schizophrenia spans a broad scope of potential etiologic factors involved in the disorder, including environmental insults, vulnerability genes, copy number variants, and epigenetics. The book thoroughly examines each of these topics from the vantage point of epidemiologic, clinical, and basic neuroscience (animal model) approaches. It is an essential resource for clinical researchers in psychiatry, psychology, and other mental health fields; for neuroscientists representing many sub-disciplines; and for clinical mental health professionals. Alan S. Brown and Paul H. Patterson, leading researchers on this topic, have ensured uniformity in their collection's format and use of pedagogical structures, advancing a text that is much more cohesive than many other edited works in psychiatry and neuroscience.

Alan S. Brown is Professor of Psychiatry and Epidemiology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health. He is also director of the Unit in Birth Cohort Studies at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. His honors include the A. E. Bennett Research Award from the Society of Biological Psychiatry, the Bingham Award for Scholarship in Schizophrenia, awards from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, and several distinguished lectureships. Paul H. Patterson is the Anne P. and Benjamin F. Biaggini Professor of Biological Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. Prior to arriving at Caltech he served on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School for ten years. His honors include the Ulf von Euler Lectureship at the Karolinska Institutet, a Distinguished Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, a Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the W. Alden Spencer Award for outstanding research contributions in neural science, Columbia University, and a visiting professorship at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London.