Biological Explanations For Schizophrenia

Question 1

What is one biological explanation of schizophrenia

Answer 1

Genetic factors

Question 2

What is supporting evidence for genetic factors

Answer 2

family studies, twin studies and adoption studies.

Question 3

Who studied genetic relatedness

Answer 3

Gottesman

Question 4

What did Gottesman find about genetic relatedness

Answer 4

children with two schizophrenic parents have a concordance rate of 46%, compared to just 13% concordance rate for a child with only one parents with schizophrenia and 9% for a sibling who has schizophrenia.

Question 5

What does Gottesman’s research show

Answer 5

that schizophrenia does run in families however it could also be due to common rearing patterns and other non-heredity factors.

Question 6

How does gottesmans research on genetic relatedness link with expressed emotion

Answer 6

the family could be hostile and this would then increase the chances of an individual becoming schizophrenic.

Question 7

Who researched schizophrenia in twins

Answer 7

Joseph

Question 8

What did Joseph find about schizophrenia in twins

Answer 8

monozygotic twins had a 40.4% chance of developing schizophrenia compared to a 7.4% chance for dizygotic twins. Twins environment are equivalent yet monozygotic twins that share 100% of their genes do have a 100% concordance rate

Question 9

what does Joseph’s research show

Answer 9

that environments do play a significant role in developing schizophrenia as well. This can also be shown through the diathesis stress model.

Question 10

Who researched adoption studies with schizophrenia

Answer 10

Tieneri et al

Question 11

What did tierneri et al study and find

Answer 11

164 Finland adoptees and found the biological mothers who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. 6.7% of their children had also been diagnosed with it, compared to 2% of 197 control adoptees whose biological mothers did not have schizophrenia.

Question 12

What did the investigators of Tieneri et al’s study conclude

Answer 12

that these findings showed that the genetic liability to schizophrenia had been ‘decisively confirmed’.

Question 13

Evaluation of the biological approach for schizophrenia

Answer 13

1. Another biological explanation
2. Mixed evidence for the dopamine hypothesis
3. Development of treatments for sz
4. Key weaknesses

Question 14

Evaluation: another biological explanation

Answer 14

Another biological explanation is the dopamine hypothesis which states that schizophrenics have an abnormal amount of D2 receptors so there is more dopamine binding. If there are disturbances with these processors it can lead to attention, perception and thought problems. This evidence that dopamine has a link to schizophrenia comes from amphetamines, anti-psychotic drugs and Parkinson’s disease.

Question 15

Evaluation: mixed evidence for the dopamine hypothesis

Answer 15

Mixed evidence for the dopamine hypothesis-Dopamine agonists increase the levels of dopamine and make schizophrenia worse and can produce schizophrenia-like symptoms in non-sufferers.Antipsychotic drugs reduce dopamine activity.These suggest an important role of dopamine in schizophrenia .Lindstroem et al found that chemicals needed to produce dopamine are taken up faster in the brains of schizophrenia sufferers than control suggesting that they produce more dopamine.There may be other neurotransmitters involved such as glutamate.

Question 16

Evaluation: development of treatments for sz

Answer 16

Development of some highly effective treatments for schizophrenia, such as rate use of antipsychotics to treat the imbalance of dopamine commonly found in patients with schizophrenia. This demonstrates that the link between brain and behaviour that the biological approach suggests can be used to improve the lives of schizophrenic patients.

Question 17

Evaluation: key weaknesses of the bio approach

Answer 17

However, key weaknesses of the biological approach is that neuro-imaging scans have failed to show any reliable evidence of altered dopamine activity in the brains of individuals with schizophrenia, suggesting that biological explanations of schizophrenia may have very limited evidence to support them. As well as this, biological explanations are very reductionist and do not consider the wide range of factors that influence human behaviour, therefore seriously weakening these. It this range and balance of evaluation that will get you higher marks for your answers.

Question 18

What is neural correlates

Answer 18

Changes in neuronal events and mechanisms that result in the characteristic symptoms of a behaviour or mental disorder