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World J Psychiatr. Jul 19, 2021; 11(7): 355-364
Published online Jul 19, 2021. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v11.i7.355
History of the dopamine hypothesis of antipsychotic action
Mary V Seeman
Mary V Seeman, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto M5P 3L6, Ontario, Canada
Author contributions: Seeman MV is the sole author and has approved the final version.
Conflict-of-interest statement: I am the widow of one of the investigators mentioned in the text.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Mary V Seeman, OC, MDCM, DSc, Professor Emerita, Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, 260 Heath Street West, Suite #605, Toronto M5P 3L6, Ontario, Canada. mary.seeman@utoronto.ca
Received: February 25, 2021
Peer-review started: February 25, 2021
First decision: April 20, 2021
Revised: April 22, 2021
Accepted: June 22, 2021
Article in press: June 22, 2021
Published online: July 19, 2021
Processing time: 139 Days and 19.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: This history starts with the synthesis of chlorpromazine in 1950 and traces the steps taken to discover how this drug, and related drugs, work to reduce, sometimes to reverse, the delusions and hallucinations associated with psychosis. The task to understand how these drugs work in the brain continues, as many unknowns remain.