Lecture 20 (schizophrenia and autism) Flashcards
When in life do schizophrenia tend to appear?
In adolescence and young adulthood.
The prevalence of schizophrenia?
1 %
Which kind of hallucinations is found?
Mostly auditory.
The major symptoms of schizophrenia?
Auditory hallucinations, highly personalized delusions (false belief), changes in affect and cognitive changes.
Is there a genetic component?
Yes, a strong one.
What is the word for when monozygotic twins both get the disease?
They’re described as being concordant for this trait.
Stress increases or decreases the likelihood of the disorder?
Increases.
The genes that seem to increase the risk of schizophrenia are known to be involved in?
Synapse rearrangement.
Which part of the brain is enlarged in people with schizophrenia?
The cerebral ventricles, especially the lateral ventricles.
The relation between more-enlarged ventricles and the response to antipsychotic drugs?
Patients with more-enlarged ventricles tend to show poorer response to antipsychotic drugs.
What have postmortem studies of patients with schizophrenia shown in their brain?
abnormalities in several parts of the limbic system, including the hippocampus, amygdala, and parahippocampal regions (these systems are close to the lateral ventricles. And because they’re enlarged, they have to take some space from other structures).
Which surgery did the drug chlorpromazine replace?
Lobotomy; a surgical seperation of a portion of the frontal lobes from the rest of the brain.
What do antipsychotics do?
they block postsynaptic dopamine receptors, particularly dopamine D2 receptors.
What is the dopamine hypothesis in people with schizophrenia?
people with schizophrenia suffer from an excess of either dopamine release or dopamine receptors (too much dopamine).
Typical antipsychotics?
D2 receptor antagonists.
Atypical antipsychotics?
don’t have the selective high affinity for dopamine receptors that is the hallmark of the typical antipsychotics, and they feature high affinity for other types of receptors.
What is the glutamate hypothesis?
schizophrenia results from an under activation of glutamate receptors.
Positive symptoms (in general)?
symptoms that have been gained with the disease.
Negative symptoms?
behavioral functions that have been lost due to the disease.
The three diagnosis criteria in people with autism
- Problems with communication
- deviation in social play
- inflexibility, repetitive behavior, and few interests.
The symptoms have to be there before the age of 3.
How is “Theory of Mind” trying to explain autism?
That autism is due to a decreased theory of mind or mentalizing.
But can’t explain inflexibility or sensory overload.
Do people with autism focus on the whole or parts of the whole?
Parts of the whole (detail oriented).
People with autism seem to be better in infancy to?
Visual search than normal people
What medicament have they tried to treat people with autism with? (But not working)
Oxytocin
People who developed a psychosis had reduced volume where?
Cortical volume in the associative and limbic areas.
Which memory type do both skizophrenia and autism people have problems with?
Semantic
Which memory type is more incoherent in people with autism and schizophrenia?
Autobiographic
What can explain why autism are more sensitive to noise?
The prediction error theory.
