Neurodevelopment

Question 1

What is dualism?

Answer 1

There are two kinds of foundation: mental and body

The mental cannot exist outside of the body; and the body cannot think

Thus: mental events cause physical events and vice-versa
=leads to biomedical model, this excludes mental and social factors

Question 2

What is the difference between neurology and psychiatry?

Answer 2

Neurology
looking for abnormal brain chemistry, genetics, perfusion, structure
Psychiatry
the functional consequences of distress and interaction with environment, interpersonal, psychological, cultural, social issues

Question 3

Give some symptoms of schizophrenia

Answer 3

symptoms
1. Delusions: strongly held beliefs that are untrue and can seem quite bizarre.

2. Thought disorder: when someone is not thinking straight and it is hard to make sense of what they are saying.
   E.g. “The man with the hat who… I am sure he will.. But its over and the real … of the moon which is causing .. and the house isn’t really there”
   Hallucinations: the person sees, hears, smells or feels something that isn’t really there.
3. may become withdrawn and appear unemotional, lose interest, stop washing regularlyand spend a lot of time on their own.
4. not able to carry on with normal activities, difficult to concentrate on work or study.

Epidemiology
1 in 100

Question 4

What causes schizophrenia

Answer 4

• Brain volume - present prior to onset
• Functional imaging (dysfunction in prefrontal premotor, cingulate, subcortical and cerebellar regions are associated with hallucinatory experiences)
• Neurotransmitter abnormalities (dopamine blockers are main medication)
• Genetic factors (environment and genetics)

Question 5

What does Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences [CAPE] look for?

Answer 5

Bizarre experiences ( Have you ever felt as if the thoughts in your head are being taken away from you?)
Perceptual abnormalities (Have you ever seen objects, people or animals that other people can't see?)
Persecutory ideation ( Have you ever felt as if there is a conspiracy against you?)
Grandiosity (Have you ever felt as if you are destined to be someone very important?)

Question 6

What is perception?

Answer 6

=The organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment.

-Shaped by learning, memory, expectation, and attention.
“Bottom up” processing extracts features for object recognition.
“Top-down” processing refers to a person’s concept and expectations (knowledge), and selective mechanisms (attention) that influence perception.

Perception depends on complex functions of the nervous system, but subjectively seems mostly effortless because this processing happens outside conscious awareness