Schizophrenia Flashcards
Bleuler (1911) described schizophrenia as…
A split mind, a break with reality. Dissociated
Positive symptoms of schizophrenia are…
Hallucinations Thought disorders Delusions; persecution - being chased Grandeur - God Control - aliens
Negative symptoms of schizophrenia …
Flattened emotional response Poverty of speech No initiative Anhedonia Social withdrawal
Cognitive symptoms are…
Difficultly sustaining attention Low psychomotor speech Deficits in learning and memory Poor abstract thinking Poor problem solving
Heritability of schizophrenia is…
Relation - % developing schizophrenia 2 sz parents - 46 Mz twin - 48 Parents - 6 Siblings - 9 Children - 13 Spouse - 2 Gen population - 1
10%’probability in family
The dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia …
Chlorpromazine which is a dopamine antagonist stops positive symptoms. Therefore, an over activity of dopamine neurons leads to positive symptoms. This is supposed by dopamine agonists like amphetamines inducing positive symptoms in high doses
Laruelle (1996) found more dopamine in schizophrenics compared to controls. Schizophrenics are also more sensitive to amphetamine
The ventral tegmental area releases dopamine to…
The nucleus accumbens which is very reinforcing.
The amygdala which regulates fear and is important for reinforcement and behaviour.
There is an over activity in the reward systems in schizophrenics which…
Reinforces thoughts with things in life which leads to delusions
Snyder (1974) found that at the start of an episode…
Schizophrenics report elation which links to dopamine
Fibiger (1991) said that paranoid delusions are caused by…
Activity in the amygdala
Brain abnormalities in schizophrenics …
Negative and cognitive symptoms are associated with neurological damage. They have a larger ventricular size
MRI’s of twins dis concordant for schizophrenics showed the twin with schizophrenia has larger ventricles due to a loss of brain tissue
Seasonality effect claims…
That schizophrenia is related to the month you were born in. Looked at epidemic studies and showed viral infections during the 2nd trimester of pregnancy while the CNS of the baby is developing leads to higher schizophrenic births between January and May
Disconcordance in MZ twins can be explained by…
Post natal environment effect.
Davis (1995) monochromic twins who shared a placenta - 60%
Diachronic twins who did not share a placenta - 10.7%
Schizophrenia affects…
1% of the worlds population. 71 million. It costs the U.S. More than all the cancers put together.
