Biological Dysfunction as a Cause for Schizophrenia Essay -- Papers Bi

Biological Dysfunction as a Cause for Schizophrenia Schizophrenia is a mental disorder, which is characterised by a number of both positive and negative symptoms. Positive symptoms are behaviours which are present although should be absent. Examples of these are thought disorders resulting in difficulty in arranging thoughts logically, jumping from one topic of conversation to another and speaking random words. Other positive symptoms of schizophrenia include delusions whereby the effected person may feel that people are plotting against them and trying to kill them as well as hallucinations whereby the schizophrenic person hears voices in their head telling them to do things. Negative symptoms are also shown by people suffering from schizophrenia and are the absence of behaviours, which are normally present. Examples of these symptoms are a flattened emotional response, a poverty of speech and social withdrawal. It has been suggested that there are different causes for the different types of symptoms, for example excess activity in some neural circuits is said to be responsible for the positive symptoms whereas the negative symptoms are said to have developmental causes. There are many suggestions for the biological causes of schizophrenia, many with varying degrees of supporting evidence. However the five main suggestions are heritability, genes, the ‘Neurodevelopmental Hypothesis’ (including both prenatal and neonatal abnormalities and brain abnormalities), the dopamine hypothesis and the glutamine hypothesis. Firstly heritability shows how the disease can be inherited from the person’s parents. This is illustrated thr... ...vironment play a role in the cause of schizophrenia. References Weyandt, L. (2005) The Physiological Bases of Cognitive and Behavioural Disorders. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd. The following references were obtained from Weyandt (2005) Weinberger Honer et al Rioux et al Murphy, Jones & Owen Watson, S. (1996) Biology of Schizophrenia and Affective Disease. American Psychiatric Press. The following references were obtained from Watson (1996) Kender Susser Kety et al Kalat, J. (2001) Biological Psychology. Wadsworth The following references were obtained from Kalat (2001) Dalman et al Heston Carlson, N. (2004) Physiology of Behaviour. Pearson Education Ltd. The following references were obtained from Carlson (2004) Kendell & Adams Shastry