Biological changes in the brain. The process of limbic system dysfunction in schizophrenia

I derived this information from the National Alliance On Mental Illness (NAMI)

https://www.nami.org/Support-Education/Mental-Health-Education/NAMI-Basics

This is an overview of biological and chemical changes in the brain

This describes the process of limbic system dysfunction in people with schizophrenia

The reason people usually go into psychosis is dopamine not working in the brain properly.

Schizophrenia produces abnormal brain waves particularly in the temporo-limbic region on the brain.

It interferes with the ability to process information because the brain can't tone down external sounds or screen out unwanted noise.

This is called impaired gating.

Part of the cause of impaired gating is a deficiency of nicotine receptors in the hippocampus.

Nicotine from cigarrettes can temporarily override this defect providing a short break from sensory overload.

After smoking the ability to screen out background noise improves.

This is why people with schizophrenia have three times the smoking rate than of the general population.

Shrinking of grey matter in the brain for young adults diagnosed with schizophrenia happens as much as 10% beginning in the parietal lobe and then throughout the brain over a few years including frontal lobe,occipital lobe,and temporal lobe.

People with most tissue loss experience the worst systems of depression, hallucinations,delusions,disturbing or psychotic thoughts.

This is just a basic overview.

I'll do a different post on different types of schizophrenia and the reasons biologically and chemically for it.