Schizophrenia: the nature of the psychological disturbance and its possible neurochemcial basis.
Ciba Foundation symposium January 1, 1979 T J Crow
Schizophrenia is diagnosed through standardized interviews that reliably assess subjective psychological symptoms, particularly Schneider's first-rank symptoms: specific auditory hallucinations, ego-boundary disturbances (intrusions into consciousness attributed to external forces), and delusional perception. Amphetamine-like drugs can induce similar symptoms in non-schizophrenic individuals, and both those symptoms and schizophrenia symptoms are reduced by neuroleptic drugs. Amphetamines increase dopamine-mediated neural transmission while neuroleptics decrease it. Post-mortem studies of schizophrenia patients found no increase in dopamine release, but some cases showed evidence of increased dopamine receptor sensitivity.