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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01v405s954r
Title: Dreams, Drugs, and Delusions: Defining an Integrative Model of the Underlying Neural Mechanisms of Schizophrenia
Authors: Higgins, Molly
Advisors: Jacobs, Barry
Contributors: Sugarman, Susan
Department: Psychology
Class Year: 2014
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.
Extent: 84 pages
URI: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01v405s954r
Type of Material: Princeton University Senior Theses
Language: en_US
Appears in Collections:Psychology, 1930-2023

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