Generic placeholder image

Current Neuropharmacology

Editor-in-Chief

ISSN (Print): 1570-159X
ISSN (Online): 1875-6190

Glutamate and Schizophrenia

Author(s): B. N.M. van Berckel

Volume 1, Issue 4, 2003

Page: [351 - 370] Pages: 20

DOI: 10.2174/1570159033477026

Price: $65

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a complex and chronic disease that affects multiple aspects of cognition and behavior, including attention, perception, thought processes, emotion and volition. However, the pathophysiology of schizophrenia has not yet been fully clarified. For more than a decade, the dopamine hypothesis has been the most influential hypothesis in schizophrenia research. It postulates that schizophrenia is a manifestation of a hyperdopaminergic state in some regions of the brain. However, several studies have reported results that are inconsistent with the dopamine theory of schizophrenia and it is now believed that other neurotransmitter systems are probably involved. Interest in the role of excitatory amino acids in schizophrenia is rapidly increasing. Excitatory amino acids and their receptors are thought to play a role in the pathology of schizophrenia, based on several lines of evidence, such as the psychomimetic effects of glutamate receptor antagonists in non-schizophrenic subjects and patients with schizophrenia, postmortem studies of reporting changes in glutamate receptors in schizophrenia, and studies that have treated schizophrenic patients with glutamate receptor agonists. This review will focus on clinical evidence contributing to the “glutamate hypothesis of schizophrenia”.

Keywords: glutamate, schizophrenia, cognition, hyperdopaminergic, excitatory amino acids, glutamate receptor antagonists, glutamate hypothesis

« Previous

Rights & Permissions Print Cite
© 2024 Bentham Science Publishers | Privacy Policy