Data from: A genetic locus for paranoia

The psychological effects of brain-expressed imprinted genes in humans are
virtually unknown. Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) is a neurogenetic condition
mediated by genomic imprinting, which involves high rates of psychosis
characterized by hallucinations and paranoia, as well as autism. Altered
expression of two brain-expressed imprinted genes, MAGEL2 and NDN,
mediates a suite of PWS-related phenotypes, including behavior, from
studies of mice. We phenotyped a large population of typical individuals
for schizophrenia-spectrum and autism-spectrum traits, and genotyped them
for the single-nucleotide polymorphism rs850807, which is putatively
functional and linked with MAGEL2 and NDN. Genetic variation in rs850807
was strongly and exclusively associated with the Ideas of Reference
subscale of the schizophrenia spectrum, which is best typified as
paranoia. These findings provide a single-locus genetic model for
analyzing the neurological and psychological bases of paranoid thinking,
and implicate imprinted genes, and genomic conflicts, in human mentalistic
thought.