What does the dopamine system do?
Well dopamine is the chemical which grabs your attention, so if suddenly something exciting happens, then this is mediated by dopamine, you pay attention to something when dopamine is released. And in psychosis, what people find is that everything seems to catch their attention. A little noise or the way that somebody grimaces or somebody new comes in the door, or they hear something on the television, all of these things seem to be tremendously important and it’s because the dopamine makes them important. They think, “Gosh, these are really important to me” and begin to connect them. They think one is connected to the other, they think that television is talking to them, they think the neighbours are conspiring against them. Stick them all together and they develop a sort of delusional explanation that all of these things are happening to me because I am tremendously important, or because the CIA are ganging up against me. And it’s the dopamine release that causes people to develop th
