from Current topics in latent inhibition research
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
Introduction
Schizophrenia is a severe neuropsychiatric disorder of unknown aetiology. The condition is clinically heterogeneous and affects virtually all areas of life, often resulting in disabling cognitive, perceptual, and emotional symptoms. The symptoms of schizophrenia are generally classified as positive (e.g. hallucinations and delusions), negative (e.g. anhedonia, alogia, thought paucity) and cognitive (e.g. thought disorder, bizarre thinking). The disease course is often chronic and the financial cost on the health-care system and society is tremendous, in addition to the personal consequences of the illness for friends and family of sufferers (Mangalore & Knapp,2007; McEvoy, 2007). Tragically, a substantial number of patients commit suicide.
The most successful treatments for schizophrenia that are currently prescribed are pharmacological, and most of these involve blockade of striatal dopamine receptors (Kapur & Remington, 2001). These treatments are successful in reducing the acute symptoms of the condition but provide no cure; accordingly, the need for a better understanding of the aetiology and pathophysiology of schizophrenia and the development of novel treatments is considerable. Drug development draws on many experimental strategies as well as on serendipity (Carpenter & Koenig, 2008; Javitt et al., 2008); translational models such as latent inhibition (LI) play an important role in the strategic effort to develop new treatments (Weiner, 2003). Indeed, a wealth of animal data exist that support the utility of the LI paradigm in studies of antipsychotic treatments (e.g., Weiner, this volume).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.