Psych CASC / OSCE · foundations — neuroscience for fellowship psychiatry
Explaining circuits to a junior doctor — CASC/teaching station
MRCPsych/FRANZCP-style teaching station: circuit localisation, dopamine pathways, frontal syndromes, organic work-up, and limits of imaging.
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Target exams
FRANZCPMRCPsychABPNMD-DNB
Prompt
You are the psychiatry registrar. A foundation doctor asks you to explain, in 8–10 minutes, how neural circuits help make sense of a patient with first-episode psychosis and a coexisting history of orbitofrontal TBI. Teach without condescension, link anatomy to clinical decisions, and correct the junior's belief that 'an fMRI will confirm schizophrenia'.
Station brief
Format. Teaching/communication station, approximately 8–10 minutes. Interactive, not a lecture dump. [1]
Candidate instructions. Explain circuit frameworks relevant to this patient; correct misconceptions about diagnostic fMRI; outline organic work-up; leave the junior with a memorable four-path dopamine map and three frontal syndromes. [2][3]
References5ShowHide
- [1]Howes OD, Kapur S The dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia: version III--the final common pathway Schizophr Bull, 2009.PMID 19325164
- [2]Cummings JL Frontal-subcortical circuits and human behavior Arch Neurol, 1993.PMID 8352676
- [3]Menon V Large-scale brain networks and psychopathology: a unifying triple network model Trends Cogn Sci, 2011.PMID 21908230
- [4]Raichle ME, MacLeod AM, Snyder AZ, Powers WJ, Gusnard DA, Shulman GL A default mode of brain function Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 2001.PMID 11209064
- [5]Stephan KE, Friston KJ, Frith CD Dysconnection in schizophrenia: from abnormal synaptic plasticity to failures of self-monitoring Schizophr Bull, 2009.PMID 19155345