Hi all. I have a couple of announcements to make and a piece of schizophrenia research to share. Today’s post is about:

Brain activity linked to delusional (psychotic) experiences in schizophrenia
An interview with ShareCare
Advertising on the Bipolar Burble

1. Brain Activity Linked to Psychotic Experiences in Schizophrenia

As ever, I hear from people who don’t believe that mental illness is a physical illness and no amount of research to the contrary will convince them otherwise. However, today I share contrary evidence anyway.

Dopamine and Schizophrenia

There is a thought that dopamine (a neurotransmitter) – an excess thereof – plays a big role in psychosis (delusions and hallucinations) and schizophrenia. How do we know this? Because antipsychotics reduce dopamine firing and this combats psychosis.

Overactive Dopamine Seen on Brain Scan

More than 2/3 of people with schizophrenia suffer from delusions of reference – delusions that neutral information is about them. So, for example, a person with schizophrenia might think a newspaper story or a billboard is really about them.

So researchers took people with schizophrenia and compared their brains via MRI to those of non-schizophrenic brains and sure enough, during neutral statements, people with schizophrenia identified them as being about them and also had greater activation of the parts of their brain associated with dopamine.

In other words, when suffering from a delusion, the cause appears to be organic. Read all about it here.

2. Interview with ShareCare

Some of you might recall that ShareCare recently named me the second most influential depression writer online. Well, they have followed that up by doing an interview with me. You can learn about why I called this blog the Bipolar Burble and why I have red hair in ShareCare’s piece here.

3. Advertising on the Bipolar Burble

My policy has always been to not accept advertising on the Bipolar Burble. I create this content, I host it and I designed the site; and I do it all for the people who need this information – not because of remuneration.

But that has now changed. I’m now accepting selected advertisements and sponsored links on the Bipolar Burble.

To everyone who is disappointed, know that I understand, but that this is something I agonized over and fought for a long time, but now I just have to give in. I need this place to be source of income for me. It’s just old-fashioned economics at work.

Right now there are very few ads but over time there will be more. Some text in older posts will be linked to external sites but this text will always be underlined and it will be in orange.

I hope you can understand and appreciate my needs here.