Howes And Kapur 2009 Flashcards
What did Howes and Kapur argue?
There’s a wide range of genetic and environmental factors that may lead to excess dopamine in this region.
• psychosis proneness.
• predisposition from genes (COMT + DISC1).
What does COMT and DISC 1 support?
Psychosis proneness.
How does COMT gene link to dopamine?
Provides instructions for the production of the enzyme which breaks down dopamine.
How does DISC 1 link to serotonin and dopamine?
DISC 1 regulates GABA which regulates serotonin which regulates dopamine.
What is aberrant salience?
The tendency for irrelevant stimuli to be attributed motivational salience and thus to attract attention and influence behavior inappropriately.
What does aberrant salience cause?
Causes maladaptive links to be formed as you are overwhelmed by stimuli.
How to do urban areas cause sz?
Environmental factors affect aberrant salience. Urban areas have more stimuli which causes more stress which is a risk factor of sz.
Howes and Kapur vs Rossum and Davis.
More holistic than both of them as they focus on the effects of both genes and environment.
What causes social withdrawal?
Dopamine disregulation increases the ‘noise in the system’ which leads to social withdrawal.
What’s an issue with Howes and Kapur?
Can’t show direction of causation. Can’t say whether social isolation led to sz or sz leads to social isolation.
Conclusion?
There more to sz than just neurotransmitters as other factors such as genes, the environment and social factors should be taken into consideration.
