Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Explanations of Schizophrenia - Coggle Diagram
Explanations of Schizophrenia
Genetic (Gottesman and Shields)
Biochemical (dopamine hypothesis) Lindstrom et. al 1999
Brains of schizophrenic people
produce excess dopamine
have increased amounts of dopamine receptors
have receptors with increased sensitivity to dopamine, which all explains positive symptoms
Evidence
Excess dopamine in the Broca's region (which is responsible for formation of language) can lead to impairment of logical speech
Drugs that increase dopamine (amphetamine and cocaine) are correlated with hallucinations and disorders
Parkinson's disease is treated with a synthetic form of dopamine (L-dopa). If the dosage is too high, it creates symptoms that are similar to schizophrenia (eg: hallucinations)
Post mortem studies, brain scans and autopsies show schizophrenic patients have high levels of dopamine receptors than usual
Wise et al. (1974) - found low levels of enzyme that breaks down dopamine in brain fluid
the closer a person’s genetic
link is to someone who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, the more likely they are to develop the disorder
Genetic abnormalities, which originate in endophenotypes, can be inherited and cause symptoms like psychosis
Sample: 57 twins (24 MZ and 33 DZ) were taken from a hospital
Twins were identified as MZ/DZ through blood group and fingerprint analysis
Parents and twins were interviewed, and some of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia
Case summaries of each participant were independently evaluated by external judges to find co-twin concordance
Results
58% concordance for MZ twins
12% concordance for DZ twins
adoption studies show that there was higher levels of developing schizophrenia in adopted kids with schizophrenic parents
Cognitive (Frith 1992)
Caused by faulty information processing and an abnormality of self-monitoring
Can 't understand the origin of their own cognitions and actions
Thought insertion
Feeling like their self-generating thoughts are not their own, but from an external source
Alien Control
Feeling like the self generated actions are not their own but from an external source
Auditory hallucinations
Feeling their inner speech is not their own, but rather from an external source
People with schizophrenia lack theory of mind so they struggle to understand the behaviours of others
Have problems with generating intentions into actions
He wanted to test the idea that schizophrenic patients confused inner-talk with hallucinations
He asked patients to decide whether items that were read aloud were done so by themselves, an experimenter or a computer
Patients with incoherent speech performed worst, which may be linked to memory and attention difficulties, crucial to self-monitoring
Schizophrenic patients apply logical reasoning to hallucinations (eg: constantly hearing 'die' which could be applied as 'I stole his girlfriend so he's out to kill me')
Frith explains that negative symptoms are a result of the inability of a patient to be able to produce spontaneous actions
External stimuli is required for a response to be produced