Dopamine hypothesis of schizophreniaThe dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia or the dopamine hypothesis of psychosis is a model that attributes the positive symptoms of schizophrenia to a disturbed and hyperactive dopaminergic signal transduction. The model draws evidence from the observation that a large number of antipsychotics have dopamine-receptor antagonistic effects. The theory, however, does not posit dopamine overabundance as a complete explanation for schizophrenia.
Strongly correlated materialStrongly correlated materials are a wide class of compounds that include insulators and electronic materials, and show unusual (often technologically useful) electronic and magnetic properties, such as metal-insulator transitions, heavy fermion behavior, half-metallicity, and spin-charge separation. The essential feature that defines these materials is that the behavior of their electrons or spinons cannot be described effectively in terms of non-interacting entities.
Neural correlates of consciousnessThe neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) refer to the relationships between mental states and neural states and constitute the minimal set of neuronal events and mechanisms sufficient for a specific conscious percept. Neuroscientists use empirical approaches to discover neural correlates of subjective phenomena; that is, neural changes which necessarily and regularly correlate with a specific experience.
Trait theoryIn psychology, trait theory (also called dispositional theory) is an approach to the study of human personality. Trait theorists are primarily interested in the measurement of traits, which can be defined as habitual patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion. According to this perspective, traits are aspects of personality that are relatively stable over time, differ across individuals (e.g. some people are outgoing whereas others are not), are relatively consistent over situations, and influence behaviour.
Quantitative trait locusA quantitative trait locus (QTL) is a locus (section of DNA) that correlates with variation of a quantitative trait in the phenotype of a population of organisms. QTLs are mapped by identifying which molecular markers (such as SNPs or AFLPs) correlate with an observed trait. This is often an early step in identifying the actual genes that cause the trait variation. A quantitative trait locus (QTL) is a region of DNA which is associated with a particular phenotypic trait, which varies in degree and which can be attributed to polygenic effects, i.
Complex traitsComplex traits, also known as quantitative traits, are traits that do not behave according to simple Mendelian inheritance laws. More specifically, their inheritance cannot be explained by the genetic segregation of a single gene. Such traits show a continuous range of variation and are influenced by both environmental and genetic factors. Compared to strictly Mendelian traits, complex traits are far more common, and because they can be hugely polygenic, they are studied using statistical techniques such as quantitative genetics and quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping rather than classical genetics methods.
Neural networkA neural network can refer to a neural circuit of biological neurons (sometimes also called a biological neural network), a network of artificial neurons or nodes in the case of an artificial neural network. Artificial neural networks are used for solving artificial intelligence (AI) problems; they model connections of biological neurons as weights between nodes. A positive weight reflects an excitatory connection, while negative values mean inhibitory connections. All inputs are modified by a weight and summed.
Overlapping geneAn overlapping gene (or OLG) is a gene whose expressible nucleotide sequence partially overlaps with the expressible nucleotide sequence of another gene. In this way, a nucleotide sequence may make a contribution to the function of one or more gene products. Overlapping genes are present and a fundamental feature of both cellular and viral genomes. The current definition of an overlapping gene varies significantly between eukaryotes, prokaryotes, and viruses.
International HapMap ProjectThe International HapMap Project was an organization that aimed to develop a haplotype map (HapMap) of the human genome, to describe the common patterns of human genetic variation. HapMap is used to find genetic variants affecting health, disease and responses to drugs and environmental factors. The information produced by the project is made freely available for research. The International HapMap Project is a collaboration among researchers at academic centers, non-profit biomedical research groups and private companies in Canada, China (including Hong Kong), Japan, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Gene predictionIn computational biology, gene prediction or gene finding refers to the process of identifying the regions of genomic DNA that encode genes. This includes protein-coding genes as well as RNA genes, but may also include prediction of other functional elements such as regulatory regions. Gene finding is one of the first and most important steps in understanding the genome of a species once it has been sequenced. In its earliest days, "gene finding" was based on painstaking experimentation on living cells and organisms.
