John Nash Schizophrenia

“A Beautiful Mind”, tells of John Nash and his experience with a psychological disorder, starting during graduate school through to his later life as a Nobel prize winner. Nash displays multiple symptoms beginning with disorganized behaviour presented as agitated walking and fidgety hand movement. Along with this, Nash exhibits the negative symptom of asociatlity exposed through his lack of close relationships with friends and family along with his inappropriate comments and inability to connect with the opposite sex. However, Nash’s most prominent symptoms were delusions and hallucinations, beginning with visual and auditory hallucinations of his roommate Charlie, followed by Charlie’s niece Marcee, and later William Parcher a defense agent.

Initial studies on the role of neurotransmitters suggested that excess dopamine activity is related to the onset of schizophrenia. Research regarding dopamine is mainly related to the positive and disorganized symptoms of the disorder, which is specifically relevant to Nash’s case. Though he did portray negative symptoms in the form of asociality, his main symptoms, delusions, and hallucinations were positive, and so excess dopamine activity is an adequate explanation. Further confirmation is demonstrated when Nash is put on a regimen of antipsychotic medication that functions by blocking dopamine receptors and experiences a decline in his positive symptoms. Additional research also suggests that underactivity of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex may be the main cause of negative schizophrenic symptoms, which would explain the slight asociality that Nash did portray. Within the prefrontal cortex, low levels of the neurotransmitter glutamate also lead to an increase in dopamine action, causing the disorganized symptoms like the fidgety movements that Nash presented. In regards to brain structure, one of the main connections between schizophrenia and the brain is enlarged ventricles. This is particularly important in Nash’s case as enlarged ventricles are correlated with poor medication response which

Along with this subjects were required to draw themselves in relation to these networks using distances to describe how close they were to the specific group (Kaz'mina et al., 1998). Following this, they completed a questionnaire regarding their networks, used to describe each member. The illustrations were later analyzed and described to find that those who depicted themselves closer to their social networks, were less symptomatic when interviewed for a follow-up one year later (Kaz'mina et al., 1998). In relation to Nash, these results point out that by attempting to regain a social network by working out of the library at the university and teaching again, he was able to gain stronger community bonds, and reduce his