This
post is prompted by an article published in this February’s Trends in
Neurosciences under the title “
Dopaminergic Basis of Salience Dysregulation inPsychosis” by Winton-Brown, Fusar-Poli, Ungless, & Howes (2014) and an
earlier paper in the Schizophrenia bulletin entitled “
The dopamine hypothesisof schizophrenia: version II – the final common pathway” (Howes & Kapur,
2009). As stated in the first title, Winton-Brown et al.’s work reviews
extensively what they consider to be evidence of the dopaminergic basis of
salience dysregulation and more briefly consider the argument for salience
dysregulation as a causal force in the etiology of schizophrenia. Their work
was building on an argument made by Howes & Kapur who suggested that a panoply
of genetic and environmental risk factors all converge on increased striatal
dopaminergic function, producing aberrant salience and thereby psychosis.
