Schizophrenia Flashcards
(17 cards)
Which environmental risk factors increase the risk for schizophrenia 
Obstetrics
Urban living
Ethnicity
Childhood adversity
Adverse life events
Cannabis
What can environmental risk factors give rise to?
Dopamine dysregulation
What is the action of antipsychotics?
They block D2 receptors
What is xanomeline
A muscarinic agonist which active GABA which inhibit glutamate release and intern dopamine synthesis 
What is the adverse effect of XANOMELINE?
Vomiting
What is a disease?
A condition with known aetiology and treatment
What is a syndrome?
A collection of symptoms
What is polygenic risk score?
Risk in relation to how many predisposing genes do you have
What is a caveat of the polygenic risk score?
A high polygenic risk score doesn’t necessarily mean you will develop the condition. It just relates to how many more times likely you are to develop the condition compared to the average person. 
What is the relationship between abnormal striatal dopamine and psychotic symptoms?
Learning and updating beliefs is based on prediction errors
Surprise events caused dopamine neurons to fire
Expected events do not cause dopamine neurons to fire

What is the relationship between dopamine neurons and learning?
When dopamine neurons fire this facilitates learning from experience so that that particular event is more likely to be remembered 
What is the relationship between striatal dopamine and early psychosis?
Increased dopamine and abnormalities in prediction error are found in unmedicated patients with early symptoms
What is the relationship between increased striatal dopamine and learning?
Increased dopamine in early psychosis means that importance is assigned to unimportant stimuli
What is the role of antipsychotics?
Antipsychotics target dopamine receptors, normalising dopamine dysfunction in early psychosis and correcting abnormal learning of unimportant stimuli as important stimuli 
Dopamine affects which brain area important for memory encoding
The hippocampus
What are risk factors for a sensitised dopamine system in individuals with schizophrenia?
Acute stress
Predisposition
Drug abuse
Biased, cognitive schemas 
