Psychotic-like Symptoms Research Articles

Studies of sleep deprivation-relationship to schizophrenia.

Introduction There were several reasons for investigating the effects of sleep deprivation in man. One was simply a curiosity about the unusual consequences of prolonged insomnia described by earlier investigators. Kleitman 1 and Tyler 2 cited in detail the hallucinations and psychotic-like symptoms that occur under these circumstances and also described subjects who developed short-lived schizophrenic psychoses. Psychological alterations, such as inattention, apathy, illusions, and hallucinations, which commonly appear after 36 to 50 hours of wakefulness, have been noted to coincide with an increase in high-frequency, low-amplitude waves on the electroencephalogogram. 3-5 In contrast to such spontaneous psychological disturbances, sleep-deprived subjects have been able to perform normally on specific tests designed to measure work capacity, psychomotor performance, intellectual acumen, and personality structure. 1,8 Measurements of the basal metabolic rate, blood sugar, alkaline reserve, blood and urinary adrenal steroids, etc., have not been found to change significantly with sleep deprivation. 1,5

The in vitro oxidation of epinephrine in plasma.

<h3>Introduction</h3> Several reports have recently appeared in the literature which speculate on the possibility that faulty epinephrine metabolism might underlie the psychological aberrations that one sees in schizophrenic patients. Lindemann¹reported aggravation of psychotic symptoms in schizophrenic patients following injections of epinephrine. Hoffer * and Osmond,³in several articles, mention this possibility and describe the appearance of psychotic-like symptoms in normal persons following the administration of adrenochrome and adrenolutin (3,5,6-trihydroxy-1-methylindole), two oxidation products of epinephrine metabolism. Rinkel and associates⁴speculate upon the possibility that adrenoxine, another oxidation product of epinephrine metabolism of yet unknown structure, may be the responsible agent in the production of psychotic symptoms. In the monograph, "Studies in Schizophrenia,"⁵we described aberrations on physiological recordings in the septal region and hippocampus which occur consistently in schizophrenic patients. Stimulation of the septal region produced autonomic changes similar to those seen with the administration of epinephrine.