Dopamine and Schizophrenia

Professor Daniel Weinberger explains that dopamine is the major focus of biochemical research into schizophrenia.

There have been specific neurochemicals associated with schizophrenia. The one that is probably most often mentioned is a chemical called dopamine. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain that is one of these chemicals that sends signals between neurons. And dopamine has been shown to be the critical chemical that all currently available treatments, medical treatments for schizophrenia, target. All currently available medical treatments for schizophrenia reduce the activity of dopamine as a signal between neurons in the brain. And because all these drugs work through dopamine, at least to some degree, there has been a lot of interest in the possibility that dopamine is an important chemical in the basic cause of schizophrenia. We have yet to find that that is the case but this has been an area of a great deal of research.