Bio expl - dopamine evaluation

Question 1

Evaluate the dopamine hypothesis (simple)

Answer 1

✓Led to important practical applications - drug therapy
✓Success of drug treatments gives support
✗ Doesn’t provide a complete explanation

Question 2

Explain ‘✓Led to important practical applications - drug therapy’

Answer 2

The discovery of neurotransmitters that might be involved in schizophrenia has lead to a revolution in the treatment of patients via drugs - they help relieve symptoms from many patients so they’re able to live a ‘normal’ life

Question 3

Explain ‘✓Success of drug treatments gives support’ including the study

Answer 3

A lot of evidence comes from the success of drug treatments - the drugs work by blocking D2 receptors and therefore reducing dopamine activity in the brain
STUDY - Leucht et al (2013) did a meta-analysis of 212 studies that had analysed the effectiveness of different antipsychotic drugs compared to a placebo - they found that all the real drugs tested were significantly more effective then the placebo
This effectiveness of these drugs suggests that dopamine does play an important role in the development of schizophrenia and therefore supports the dopamine hypothesis

Question 4

Explain ‘✗ Doesn’t provide a complete explanation’

Answer 4

Antipsychotic drugs do not alleviate hallucination and delusions in about 1/3 of patients
This suggest that other neurotransmitter systems may also produce positive symptoms of schizophrenia