Dr. Alex Curmi

speaker

2,747 appearances 18 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 13 Aug

Dr. Alex Curmi’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 18 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 9.

Appearances

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The Thinking Mind: Mental Health & Personal Growth · E185 | How Psychiatry Became Fixated on Chemical Imbalance (w/ Prof. Justin Garson) · 13 Aug 2026 podcast

What was how did he figure out in rats that dopamine was implicated, that it was a flooding of of dopamine? voice-verified

Was it kind of radioactive? voice-verified

Uh isotope. voice-verified

And then was the did he could then continue his research onto human subjects after that? voice-verified

So he conclusively proved it and then would you say that's fundamentally where the dopamine hypothesis for schizophrenia comes from, primarily from his work, would you say? voice-verified

I I believe it does. voice-verified

And I'm imagining this must be a huge deal for the psychiatric community at the time because this is finally giving some biological credence to a major cause of mental illness, giving doctors, you know, doctors love tangible things, giving doctors tangible mechanisms, explaining how and why the medications work. voice-verified

So what was the reaction of the psychiatric community at the time to these revelations? voice-verified

Mm. voice-verified

Yes, and I think voice-verified

I mean we do know that so voice-verified

our attempts to understand the neuroscientific, you know, basis of different mental health conditions, you know, depression, schizophrenia, have been uh largely not as fruitful as we would have hoped. voice-verified

You know, there was a real sense of optimism in the nineties and the two thousands and voice-verified

You know, new new interesting studies do come out from time to time. voice-verified

But it certainly it isn't the sense of optimism that there once was that we're gonna figure out the exact neuroscientific mechanisms um underlying mental health conditions. voice-verified

But in my view, like the bigger tragedy wasn't that we sh focused on that, because I think that's a legitimate thing to focus on. voice-verified

In my view, the tragedy was that then psychiatrists kind of discarded psychological knowledge, you know, an interest in human nature, an interested in the humanities, which I think up until that point, you know, 50s, 60s, 70s, psychiatrists would generally functioned as therapists as well and had a good understanding of like human nature and psychology, and that made us much more well-rounded professionally. voice-verified

and something I noticed in my training and I trained in psychiatry from voice-verified

you know, twenty sixteen to around twenty twenty two, that was my train my residency, you know, I noticed this intense preoccupation with biolog biological forces at the expense of understanding of human nature. voice-verified

So I I see that as a a huge loss really to the field. voice-verified

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