The past and future of mapping the biomarkers of psychosis

Biomarker research has investigated the neurobiological basis for individual differences in liability to psychosis. However, few biomarkers for psychosis have been consistently found to be useful. This paper reviews several previous approaches to identify putative biomarkers of liability to psychosis, and then highlights the lessons that we have learned. We argue that limiting our research to clinical patients at the extreme of the psychosis continuum would likely obscure our knowledge as to how a minority of the general population would develop psychosis. Research on putative neurobiological origins of inter-individual differences in personality traits may be useful in mapping the biomarkers of psychosis. To identify biomarkers applicable to the general population, we advocate the transdiagnostic and psychosis continuum approach. We also advocate the use of multivariate analyses and computational modelling to tackle complex multi-modal datasets. More research should be conducted to study intra-individual variations over different ranges of timescale.