SCHIZOPHRENIA
Psychology
,CHARECTERISTICS Positive symptoms Negative symptoms Cognitive symptoms
Hallucinations Alogia (poverty of speech) – Attention deficits- difficulties
Visual, olfactory(smells) reduction in the amount of with concentration and focus
Gustatory (taste) speech
Auditory
Delusions: beliefs that aren't Avolition (lack of goals and Working memory – impaired
Positive symptoms: additional real, most common being direction) – no longer engage working memory which is
behaviours persecution ( believe or participate in activities associated with the
someone is trying to harm they once did prefrontal cortex manifests
Negative symptoms: behaviours
them) and grandiosity as having lower activity
that have been removed
(believe that they are levels
Cognitive symptoms: deficits in superior)
the brain Disordered thinking: Anhedonia – inappropriate Social cues – difficulties with
thoughts and discourse jump reactions interacting which is thought
from one topic to another to be due to difficulties with
with no apparent reason emotional regulation.
Difficulties understanding
other emotions
Flat effect – appear to have
little to no emotions
Catatonic behaviour –
nervous system shuts down
causing extreme movement
, Biological explanation 1
-
DOPAMINE HYPOTHESIS
Initial link between dopamine and schizophrenia was discovered in the 1950’s while research was
being carried out into Parkinson’s
- They found that by administrating the L-DOPA drug to increase dopamine, if there was even a slight
overdose of the medication then participants displayed schizophrenic symptoms
Initial hypothesis
- Assumed that too much dopamine caused schizophrenia
- JJ Griffiths 1968 introduced psychosis in non-schizophrenic participants by administering Dextro-
amphetamine which caused P’s to demonstrate an abrupt onset of paranoid delusions as well as
cold and dethatched emotional responses
- Argued to be too simplistic so the theory progressed to consider the dopamine receptor sites
Dopamine receptor sites
- Several sub-types of dopamine receptor sites D1-D5 which are distributed in the cerebral cortex and
subcortically in the limbic system
- Sleeman and Lee 1975 demonstrated the impact of antipsychotic drugs on the D2 receptors which
are mainly found in the limbic system which allowed research into the hypothesis to progress and led
to the revised dopamine hypothesis with a focus on the limbic system
Psychology
,CHARECTERISTICS Positive symptoms Negative symptoms Cognitive symptoms
Hallucinations Alogia (poverty of speech) – Attention deficits- difficulties
Visual, olfactory(smells) reduction in the amount of with concentration and focus
Gustatory (taste) speech
Auditory
Delusions: beliefs that aren't Avolition (lack of goals and Working memory – impaired
Positive symptoms: additional real, most common being direction) – no longer engage working memory which is
behaviours persecution ( believe or participate in activities associated with the
someone is trying to harm they once did prefrontal cortex manifests
Negative symptoms: behaviours
them) and grandiosity as having lower activity
that have been removed
(believe that they are levels
Cognitive symptoms: deficits in superior)
the brain Disordered thinking: Anhedonia – inappropriate Social cues – difficulties with
thoughts and discourse jump reactions interacting which is thought
from one topic to another to be due to difficulties with
with no apparent reason emotional regulation.
Difficulties understanding
other emotions
Flat effect – appear to have
little to no emotions
Catatonic behaviour –
nervous system shuts down
causing extreme movement
, Biological explanation 1
-
DOPAMINE HYPOTHESIS
Initial link between dopamine and schizophrenia was discovered in the 1950’s while research was
being carried out into Parkinson’s
- They found that by administrating the L-DOPA drug to increase dopamine, if there was even a slight
overdose of the medication then participants displayed schizophrenic symptoms
Initial hypothesis
- Assumed that too much dopamine caused schizophrenia
- JJ Griffiths 1968 introduced psychosis in non-schizophrenic participants by administering Dextro-
amphetamine which caused P’s to demonstrate an abrupt onset of paranoid delusions as well as
cold and dethatched emotional responses
- Argued to be too simplistic so the theory progressed to consider the dopamine receptor sites
Dopamine receptor sites
- Several sub-types of dopamine receptor sites D1-D5 which are distributed in the cerebral cortex and
subcortically in the limbic system
- Sleeman and Lee 1975 demonstrated the impact of antipsychotic drugs on the D2 receptors which
are mainly found in the limbic system which allowed research into the hypothesis to progress and led
to the revised dopamine hypothesis with a focus on the limbic system
