Dopamine is not the final common pathway

Current dopamine theory propose that over-reactivity of the dopamine influence on the cortex underlie oversensitivity to salient features in the environment, resulting in the 0ver- perception and interpretation of normally neutral events as  highly significant, thus precipitating a psychosis. While undoubtedly a hyperdopmainergic state may occur in some clinical situations, it may not be a general rule. In particular, the onset of delusion-like ideas, in which the time scale is more gradual, and the content of the experience is more continuous with psychological conflicts, may not necessarily involve a hyperdopaminergic state. The predominant factors could lie in the configuration of emotional-cognitive contexts which shapes the individual’s experiences.

How are realities constructed?

How do human contact the world outside? Consider the interface between the brain and the outside world, there is only a very limited channel of sensory information. The sense organs, which are able to detect only a very small faction out of all possible information in the world. The brain, then, reconstruct based on these information, a complex representation of the external world, with all the natural, social and cultural knowledge. How does this reconstruction occur? what is there to assure its accuracy?

Psychosis and Reality

Psychosis involves problems with the processes whereby an individual gain contact with “reality”. Somehow through the very limited range of sensory data, the human mind is able to represent a highly complex representation of the state of the external physical and human world, and through this representation predict events and responses. This representation is communicated amongst man by language. Psychosis involve disruption of this process at various levels.