Posted by bleauberry on September 16, 2008, at 18:12:44
In reply to amisulpride, posted by mav27 on September 3, 2008, at 8:57:34
Like what was already mentioned, both happen at the same time. More dopamine stimulation, but with some blocking of some of that extra dopamine happening downstream.
I know that is hard for us to understand how that could work, but as I've said many times these drugs are way more complicated than the simple neurotransmitter stuff we talk about. They turn certain genes on or off, up or down; they change hormone responses and all the unknown downstream effects of that; there is bleed-through between various neurotransmitter systems; some of that dopamine might be going to receptors that would normally take just serotonin or norepinephrine; some of that dopamine is going to be converted to norepinephrine; the serotonin system is going to respond to that extra dopamine, as well as gaba, glycine, and everything else; we cannot impact one neurotransmitter system without causing changes in the others. Way too complicated for anyone on this planet to understand. We just gotta do the best we can with our primitive basic knowledge and basically let the actual result dictate whether the med is a good thing or not. Theory often doesn't pan out the way it looks on paper.
But yeah, lots of extra dopamine from amisulpride which goes somewhere and does something, but excess amounts of it on the receiving end of the dopamine system are toned down to prevent psychosis.
poster:bleauberry
thread:850048
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/neuro/20080706/msgs/852354.html