AO3 - Neural Correlates Schizophrenia

• Not all people with schizophrenia show enlarged ventricles which raises doubt on this explanation.
• Brain scanning studies may lack reliability if the patients investigated are not medication free. Antipsychotics may interfere with the outcome of many brain scans.
• Neural correlates does not consider comorbid factors such as stress or addiction. These will affect brain tissue and make cause and effect conclusions more difficult.
• Ho et al (2003) have shown by rescanning schizophrenic patients, that brain differences increase overtime as symptoms worsen. This is despite being on medication and helps establish a stronger causal relationship
• The neural correlates explanation must also consider the role of dopamine and it's action in a schizophrenics brain. Dopamine is important in the functioning of several brain systems related to symptoms of schizophrenia.
• This explanation is reductionist as the ignores the individual experiences of the patient and just focuses on structural or neural brain differences.
• Brain scans are used to support the argument for the neural correlates explanation, and they provide reliable data from which conclusions can be drawn.
• As this explanation is based on correlational data, it is difficult to make causal conclusions.