Antisaccade performance is related to genetic loading for schizophrenia

Disturbances of the oculomotor system are promising endophenotypes for schizophrenia. Increased error rates in the antisaccade task and prolonged antisaccade latencies have been found in patients with schizophrenia and their first degree relatives. We investigated oculomotor performance in 41 parents of schizophrenia patients and 22 controls with a prosaccade task and an antisaccade task. Parents were grouped into parents with a positive family history for schizophrenia (N = 9) and parents with a negative family history for schizophrenia (N = 32). An overlap-paradigm was applied; eye movements were recorded using infrared oculography. The combined group of parents made more antisaccade direction errors than controls (p = 0.005) and there was a linear increase in direction errors from controls via negative family history parents to positive family history parents (p = 0.008). Antisaccade latencies were prolonged in the combined parent group (p = 0.057) compared to controls and there was a linear increase in latency with genetic loading (p = 0.018). No group differences were found for prosaccade parameters. These results support the hypothesis that antisaccade impairment is associated with genetic loading for schizophrenia.