Schizophrenia Mini-Lecture Flashcards
Psychopathology
Refers to either the study of mental illness/distress or the manifestation of behaviors and experiences which may be indicative of mental illness or psychological impairment
Neurodiversity
Viewpoint that brain differences are normal and not deficits
Schizophrenia
- A serious mental condition of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation
- Relatively rare
- Highly stigmatized
Positive (Deviant) Symptoms
- Symptoms indicating that the person has lost touch with reality, called positive because of the presence of behaviors should not be there in the first place.
- Hallucinations
- Delusions
- Disorganized speech
Negative (Deficit) Symptoms
- Symptoms associated with disruptions to normal emotions and behaviors
- Flat affect
- Reduced feelings of pleasure
- Difficulty beginning or sustaining activities
- Reduced speaking
Flat Affect
Reduced expression of emotions via facial expression or voice tone
Cognitive Symptoms Of SZPH
- Symptoms that affect normal thinking and memory deficits
- Working memory deficits
- Trouble focusing
- Poor executive function
- Bizarre behavior
DSM-5 Schizophrenia Diagnosis Criteria
At least one positive symptom and two symptoms total for a significant portion of time during a one-month period
Schizophrenia Common Ages
Late teens to early thirties
Schizophrenia Gender
Occurs earlier in males than females
Schizophrenia Genetics
Can run in families but is not based on a single gene
Schizophrenia Environmental Contributors
Exposure to viruses, problems during birth, malnutrition, and psychosocial factors could work with the genes to develop into schizophrenia
Neural Basis of Schizophrenia
- Altered hippocampus function may be related to genetic risks for schizophrenia
- Thalamus shows shrinkage in individuals with schizophrenia
- Higher rate of gray matter loss; decreased frontal lobe activation
Chlorpromazine
- First popularly prescribed antipsychotic drug
- First part of an analgesic/sedative cocktail to prep people for surgery in tandem with ice baths to reduce the somatic reaction of physical trauma associated with surgery (shock)
- Ice baths were dropped, but chlorpromazine remained
- Its use in helping with surgery-related anxiety led to it being used to treat schizophrenic people
- Reduces positive summations by reducing the patients’ erratic behavior and sedating them
Dopamine and Antipsychotics
- A few years after being prescribed, it was discovered that these drugs interacted with dopamine pathways
- Some drugs metabolized into dopamine as precursors while others were shown to bind to the D2 receptors for a long period of time
- Neuroleptics produced dopamine related side effects like motor deficits (typical antipsychotics)
Neuroleptics
- Drugs which bind to D2 receptors causing neurolepsis: psychomotor slowing, affective neutrality, and emotional quieting
Clozapine
- Developed in the mid 1970’s
- Fewer dopamine-related side effects
- Binds to D2 for a short period of time, and has a prominent affinity for serotonin receptors
- Led to the development of atypical antipsychotics that do not solely target the dopamine system
Model of Aberrant Salience
- A theory of schizo that combines many different facets of the disorder
- Proposes that psychotic symptoms first emerge when chaotic brain dopamine transmission leads to a shift in stimuli significance
- Focuses more on stimuli that would normally be considered irrelevant - Basically, says the SZ patients associate neutral objects in their environment with some salient aversive experience that can’t be explained and show symptoms in response. Controlled by dopamine
- Similar to incentive sensitization theory but for more mild cues
- Individuals with SZPH show abnormally high levels of this
Incentive Sensitization Theory
Says that dopamine neurons become sensitized (hyper-reactive) in response to drug cues. This heightened dopamine causes a burst of motivation that is responsible for the degree of craving or wanting
- Individuals with SZPH show normal levels of this
Adaptive Salience
The normal, relevant association between cues and their salience (an unexpected camera in your house causing unsafe feelings is normal)
What is dopamine doing in schizo patients?
Dopamine encodes the attractiveness/aversiveness of a cue. In individuals with schizophrenia it seems as if the dopamine system is running on full throttle. They pay an abnormally large amount of attention to cues that are normally not very salient
