Eduqas A-Level Psychology A290QS
Biological Approach
Psychodynamic Approach
Behaviourist Approach
Cognitive Approach
Positive Approach
Comparing the Five Approaches
Core Studies in Social and Developmental Psychology
Planning Psychological Research
Data Handling, Statistics and Mathematical Skills
Evaluating and Validating Research
Personal Investigations and Novel Research Scenarios
Addictive BehavioursAddictive
Autistic Spectrum BehavioursAutistic spectrum
Bullying BehavioursBullying
Criminal BehavioursCriminal
SchizophreniaSchizophrenia
StressStress
Controversies in Psychology
Schizophrenia
Biological explanations: Dopamine hypothesis and Enlarged ventricles
- 3 things to know
- Component 3 Applications
Overview
Recall questions on Dopamine hypothesis and Enlarged ventricles.
What you need to know
Answer each one before you reveal it.
What evidence from antipsychotic drugs supports the dopamine hypothesis?
What evidence from stimulant drugs supports the dopamine hypothesis?
Questions from this subtopic
Each one with the model answer underneath.
- 1
State the original dopamine hypothesis.
Model answer
That the symptoms of schizophrenia arise from excessive dopamine activity in the brain, particularly overstimulation of D2 receptors in subcortical pathways.
- 2
What evidence from antipsychotic drugs supports the dopamine hypothesis?
Model answer
Drugs that reduce positive symptoms block D2 receptors, and the clinical dose required tends to track how strongly a drug binds to those receptors.
- 3
What evidence from stimulant drugs supports it?
Model answer
Amphetamine and other drugs that raise dopamine release can produce hallucinations and paranoid delusions resembling positive symptoms in people without the diagnosis.
- 4
How did Davis and colleagues (1991) revise the hypothesis?
Model answer
They proposed excessive dopamine activity in mesolimbic pathways producing positive symptoms, combined with insufficient dopamine activity in the prefrontal cortex producing negative and cognitive symptoms.
- 5
What did Howes and Kapur (2009) argue in their third version of the hypothesis?
Model answer
That the key abnormality is increased presynaptic dopamine synthesis in the striatum, and that dopamine dysregulation is the final common pathway through which many different risk factors act.
- 6
Explain aberrant salience.
Model answer
Kapur's (2003) proposal that excess dopamine makes unimportant stimuli feel significant, so ordinary events seem personally meaningful and the person constructs delusional explanations for them.
Other ways to work this
The same content, four other ways.
What is inside Levo
Six ways to work the same material.
Every question in Schizophrenia, on a schedule.
Attempt a question from memory, write the correct version, then attempt it again. Levo records the jump between your first attempt and your last, and brings each question back on the day you are due to forget it.
Or £46 a year, about £3.83 a month. Cancel anytime.