Auditory Hallucination in Schizophrenic Illness Essay - 1

Auditory Hallucination in Schizophrenic Illness - Essay Example Paranoid thinking or psychotic symptoms which are symptoms of schizophrenia could also be experienced with high levels of dopamine in the brain. When the brain recognizes that there is excessive dopamine, symptoms which are schizophrenic appear. Schizophrenic patients also have more dopamine receptors than people without it (Barkus et al., 2007). Glutamate is also associated with schizophrenia. It has a major role in the forming and encoding of memory. It is also thought to have a function in learning. When glutamate receptors are blocked for instance when one takes PCP, there is reported paranoia that is also a symptom of schizophrenia. Schizophrenic patients have been found to possess lower levels of glutamate compared to normal people. The two neurotransmitters interaction is said to be at the core of schizophrenia since the production of many dopamine receptors affects the glutamate receptors by blocking them and thus reducing their action (Spencer et al., 2009). The dopamine hypothesis is generally the best explanation for the cause of schizophrenia at the neurotransmitter level. It is the most etiologic theory in psychotherapy. Its proposal that certain pathways of dopamine are overactive in schizophrenia could be true because when one takes drugs that increase dopamine, they induce positive symptoms but when the drugs that block its receptors are taken they reduce the positive symptoms. In other words, the experiences and behaviors associated with schizophrenia could be fully made clear by the transformations of dopamine function in the brain (Ven, 2006). Auditory hallucinations could be said to be a false perception of sound or experiencing internal voices and noises that do not originate from the external world and are seen to be separate from the normal brain processes.