What did Gottesman and Shields find?
This twin study was carried out by Irving Gottesman (left) and James Shields in the 1960s. It was a key piece of research that established that there is a genetic component to the mental illness schizophrenia.
What was the Gottesman study about?
Summary and Background. Gottesman et al (2010) investigated couples who have psychiatric illnesses and their offspring to calculate the risk of their offspring also being diagnosed with a psychiatric illness.
What type of study is Gottesman?
| Irving Gottesman | |
|---|---|
| Known for | Genetic studies of schizophrenia |
| Awards | Hofheimer Prize for Research APA Distinguished Scientific Contributions Dobzhansky Award Joseph Zubin Award Grawemeyer Award |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Behavior genetics, Psychiatric genetics |
What are MZ and DZ twins?
Phenotypic variability and discordance Monozygotic (MZ) twins arise from a single zygote, and have always been thought to inherit identical genomic sequences [1], whereas dizygotic (DZ) twins arise from two different zygotes and, just like siblings, share on average 50% identity in their genomic sequence.
What are the biological explanations of schizophrenia?
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter. It is one of the chemicals in the brain which causes neurons to fire. The original dopamine hypothesis stated that schizophrenia suffered from an excessive amount of dopamine. This causes the neurons that use dopamine to fire too often and transmit too many messages.
How is the biochemical explanation of mental illness reductionist?
The biological explanation is reductionist in its beliefs that the cause of mental illness is due to genetics and nothing else.
Who came up with the dopamine hypothesis?
Arvid Carlsson
The “original dopamine hypothesis” states that hyperactive dopamine transmission results in schizophrenic symptoms. This hypothesis was formed upon the discovery of dopamine as a neurotransmitter in the brain by Arvid Carlsson (6–12).
What is the significance of the Gottesman and shields study?
It was a key piece of research that established that there is a genetic component to the mental illness schizophrenia. It shows how scientific research proceeds, because Gottesman & Shields tested the hypothesis that there is a genetic component to schizophrenia by comparing MZ and DZ twins, where one twin had the illness.
What did Gottesman and shields 1966 say about schizophrenia?
Gottesman and Shields 1966. Gottesman and Shields aimed at looking at how far schizophrenia was genetic and they also tried to replicate other studies that had already found a genetic link with schizophrenia. Secondary data was also gathered from a hospital in USA about twins who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.
How reliable are Gottesman&Shields’ twin studies?
Gottesman & Shields are deliberately replicating a twin study design carried out by 11 previous small-scale studies. This demonstrates reliability, especially because Gottesman & Shields got similar results. By modern standards, the procedures are not reliable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3kTunYCjCw