The Dopamine Hypothesis of Schizophrenia – Advances in Neurobiology and Clinical Application. The dopamine hypothesis stems from early research carried out in the 1960’s and 1970’s when studies involved the use of amphetamine (increases dopamine levels) which increased psychotic symptoms while reserpine which depletes dopamine levels reduced ...
Usually, dopamine’s role is to mediate motivational salience and thereby gives a person the ability to determine what stimulus grabs their attention and drives the subsequent behaviour. Schizophrenia is associated with an aberrant attribution of salience due to dysregulated striatal dopamine transmission.
Dopamine is synthesised from the amino acid tyrosine. Tyrosine is converted into DOPA by the enzyme tyrosine hydroxylase.
When dopamine is released during neurotransmission, it acts on 5 types of postsynaptic receptors (D1-D5).
The blockade of dopamine receptors by 'antipsychotic' drugs is an important cause of the 'negative symptoms' of 'schizophrenia'. These drugs are known to cause anhedonia and emotional flatness. The label of an 'incurable brain disease' and the consequences of stigmatisation also contribute to loss of motivation, depression and suicide.
Projections into the ventromedial prefrontal cortex regulate emotions and affect. Decreased dopamine in the mesocortical projection to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is postulated to be responsible for negative and depressive symptoms of schizophrenia.
The mesolimbic pathway is also the site of the rewards pathway and mediates pleasure and reward. Antipsychotics can block D2 receptors in this pathway reducing pleasure effects. This may be one explanation as to why individuals with schizophrenia have a higher incidence of smoking as nicotine enhances dopamine in the reward pathway (self-medication hypothesis)
The dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia, which was formulated in the 1960s after the discovery of the antipsychotic actions of chlorpromazine, was extremely successful as a heuristic principle for interpreting aspects of the phenomenology of schizophrenia. The development of improved antipsychotic medications was guided by a search ...
The dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia postulates that hyperactivity of dopamine D2 receptor neurotransmission in subcortical and limbic brain regions contributes to positive symptoms of schizophrenia, whereas negative and cognitive symptoms of the disorder can be attributed to hypofunctionality ...
This initial prodrome of schizophrenia is defined as a period of time which begins with the first behavioral, cognitive and perceptual changes in a person and extends up to the development of the first psychotic symptoms ( Fusar-Poli et al., 2013; Yung & McGorry, 1996 ). The so-called prodromal symptoms include cognitive basic symptoms (disturbances of thought, language, perception and attention), attenuated psychotic symptoms (delusional ideas, perceptual abnormalities, disorganized speech) and brief limited intermittent psychotic symptoms (hallucinations and delusions for less than 7 days) ( Schultze-Lutter et al., 2015 ). Early recognition of the prodromal phase and early therapeutic interventions might be helpful to prevent or to delay the transition to schizophrenia in vulnerable persons. Therefore, it is of great importance to identify the potential neurobiological markers and to elucidate the pathophysiological mechanisms that underlie the transition to schizophrenia. In this context, early and late neurodevelopmental disturbances in schizophrenia have been studied and results show that structural und functional brain abnormalities are already apparent in the premorbid stage ( Juckel et al., 2012; Pantelis et al., 2005; Witthaus et al., 2010 ). However, changes in the action of brain neurotransmitters, especially serotonin, are more difficult to measure in humans than structural abnormalities, although it is of great interest for early recognition to know whether altered serotonergic activity can be interpreted as an indicator for vulnerability of schizophrenia or for the progression of the illness.
Because of the clinical heterogeneity of people diagnosed as schizophrenic and the complex relationships among neurobiologic systems, rather than attempting to find a single “cause” for the entire spectrum of schizophrenia, we suggest that studies concentrate on two more modest goals.
A distinction that we think especially useful in conceptualizing schizophrenia is that of “state components” and “trait components.”. State components refer to aspects of the psychotic state itself, such as behavioral disorganization, hallucinations, and delusions.
DA receptors are present in the basal ganglia, the mesolimbic system, the tuberoinfundibular region and, to a much lesser extent, in the cerebral cortex. Studies on the effects of dopaminergic transmission of psychotomimetic agents such as amphetamine, PCP and benzmorphan point to a possible common mechanism of psychotic action. Carlsson (1988) proposed that ‘information overload’ and ‘hyper-arousal’ are integral features of many psychotic illnesses. He postulated that these features arise because of impairment in the mesolimbic system's protective effects on cortical function. In health, Carlsson argued, mesolimbic glutamate-releasing neurons oppose mesolimbic dopaminergic pathways and maintain this protective function. In this model, mesolimbic DA dysregulation is considered secondary to frontal dysfunction. A further recent elaboration on the DA hypothesis of schizophrenia considers the function of the mesolimbic DA system in assigning importance, or salience, to stimuli or ideas ( Kapur 2003; Murray et al 2008 ). It is proposed that DA attaches a label (e.g.‘dangerous’, ‘pleasant’, etc.) to stimuli and ideas and that with the labels in place, motivation and goal-directed behaviour easily follows. In schizophrenia, excess DA leads to the assignment of ‘labels’ or salience to irrelevant or insignificant thoughts or events, creating a psychotic state.
In line with the hypothesis of an increased central serotonergic activity in schizophrenia, a decreased LDAEP could be demonstrated in unmedicated schizophrenia patients compared to healthy controls ( Juckel et al., 2003 ). This finding could be replicated in a second study reporting a weaker LDAEP, indicating high serotonergic activity, in schizophrenic patients compared to healthy controls ( Juckel et al., 2008b ). Interestingly, this finding was also valid for patients under antipsychotic medication supporting the assumption that enhanced serotonergic neurotransmission, as shown by a weak LDAEP, could be a trait characteristic in schizophrenia . Similar results have been reported by Park et al. (2010) for schizophrenia patients under ongoing antipsychotic medication.