The multiplex multigenerational family study of schizophrenia showed estimated heritability of 0.373 for emotion identification efficiency (Gur et al., 2007). In an independent family study of African-Americans the heritability for emotion identification accuracy was 0.43 and for speed 0.21 (Calkins et al., 2010). In a third independent family sample, emotion identification was also heritable and linked with other endophenotypes to several genes (Greenwood et al., 2011, 2013). In the PNC sample we used genome-wide complex trait analysis to estimate the SNP-based heritability of each of the CNB domains. Several domains, including emotion identification, suggested strong influence of common genetic variants (Robinson et al., 2014). These preliminary results are encouraging. As progress in the field requires multiple levels of analysis, translational research in animal models benefits from converging paradigms, such as affiliative behavior, and additional measures of brain function, such as electrophysiology.
