Schizophrenia: advances in its basic biology.

Some recent work on possible biochemical aetiological factors in schizophrenia are reviewed in this paper. For over 80 years, research workers have searched diligently for biological disorders in schizophrenia and it was only in the last thirty or so years that encouraging results have been presented. It is now believed that some genetically determined factors, mediated through the dopaminergic pathways in the brain are responsible for schizophrenic symptomatology. Specific dopaminergic pathways are thought to be responsible for some of the specific clinical features of schizophrenia.