COMT and schizophrenia: The evidence of association between COMT genotype and increasing risk for developing schizophrenia remains to be elucidated; however, the results of this study suggested that NIRS that is sensitive to COMT genetic variation in patients with schizophrenia might be a noninvasive tool and that prefrontal hemodynamic response may be a useful index for the evaluation and prediction of clinical response such as improvement of prefrontal cognitive dysfunction by atypical antipsychotic medication in clinical settings.