Final answer:
Schizophrenia is a mental illness characterized by symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, and cognitive dysfunction. The disease is believed to involve malfunctioning dopaminergic neurons and problems with glutamate signaling.
Step-by-step explanation:
Schizophrenia is a serious and often debilitating mental illness affecting one percent of people in the United States. Symptoms of the disease include the inability to differentiate between reality and imagination, inappropriate and unregulated emotional responses, difficulty thinking, and problems with social situations. Loss of dopaminergic neurons in the brain is believed to be a major factor in the development of schizophrenia. The reduction in dopamine levels results in a dysregulation of glutamate signaling, leading to neurodegeneration and cognitive impairments associated with the disease.