Nigg J T, Goldsmith H H
Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing 48824-1117, USA.
Hum Biol. 1998 Apr;70(2):387-412.
Personality, temperament, and psychopathology were until recently largely distinct areas of study, each of which emphasized partitioning of heritable and environmental variance. The emergence of the paradigm of developmental psychopathology along with application of multivariate biometric models to behavioral genetic data has defined a second phase of research in these domains. Integrated research has begun to map dimensional liability-threshold models of psychopathology and to evaluate empirically the categorical versus dimensional etiology of traits and disorders. An interesting pattern in the data is that psychopathology is probably not merely an extreme of temperament or personality in many cases. Variations in temperament and personality are now known to be heavily influenced by additive genetic and nonshared environmental factors and to exhibit stable or increasing heritability across development. This pattern holds for some measures of psychopathology but not for others. For example, shared environment effects and decreasing heritability influence much adolescent psychopathology, and comorbid problems in young children appear to be due in part to shared environment effects. Other recent biometric work on the central problem of comorbidity in psychopathology suggests that shared genetic covariation accounts for some specific comorbidities but not others. A third phase of research is now underway, featuring study of specific molecular gene mechanisms by means of linkage and association studies in relation to behavioral phenotypes. Complementary integration of discoveries from biometric behavioral studies and molecular studies is expected to be the norm for the near future.
直到最近，人格、气质和精神病理学在很大程度上仍是不同的研究领域，每个领域都强调对遗传和环境变异的划分。发展性精神病理学范式的出现以及多变量生物统计模型在行为遗传学数据中的应用，定义了这些领域研究的第二阶段。整合性研究已开始绘制精神病理学的维度易感性-阈值模型，并通过实证评估特质和障碍的分类病因与维度病因。数据中一个有趣的模式是，在许多情况下，精神病理学可能不仅仅是气质或人格的极端表现。现在已知气质和人格的变异受到加性遗传和非共享环境因素的严重影响，并在整个发育过程中表现出稳定或增加的遗传度。这种模式适用于某些精神病理学测量指标，但不适用于其他指标。例如，共享环境效应和遗传度降低影响了许多青少年精神病理学，幼儿的共病问题似乎部分归因于共享环境效应。最近关于精神病理学中共病这一核心问题的其他生物统计学研究表明，共享遗传协变解释了一些特定的共病情况，但不是所有情况。现在正在进行第三阶段的研究，其特点是通过与行为表型相关的连锁和关联研究来研究特定的分子基因机制。预计生物统计学行为研究和分子研究的发现进行互补整合将成为不久的将来的常态。
