Dreams, Drugs, and Delusions: Defining an Integrative Model of the Underlying Neural Mechanisms of Schizophrenia

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a heterogeneous disorder that afflicts a small number of individuals in the population, but results in a psychotic, altered state of cognition/consciousness that is quite disabling. Historically, similarities have been drawn between the nature of schizophrenic, dreaming, and drug-induced psychosis. However, analogies between the states have not fully been drawn out as a result of some differences either in the proposed underlying mechanisms, or in behavior or experiential aspects of the three different states. In this paper, I will consider the current research on the psychopathology of schizophrenia in relation to the experience and mechanisms that drive dreaming and drug-induced psychoses with the hopes of integrating knowledge of the three states into a model of schizophrenia. The key neuromodulatory and neurotransmitter systems of these three states are very interconnected and influence one another in both direct and indirect ways. Having a better understanding of the ways in which the aminergic/cholinergic, the dopamine, and the glutamatergic systems converge differently in these three states to produce similar psychotic outcomes can shed light on possible alternative treatment possibilities.