When they don't, you can get illnesses like Parkinson's disease, which is caused by a dopamine deficiency. You might have schizophrenia, which is thought to be caused in part by an imbalance of dopamine, or epilepsy, apparently caused in part by abnormalities with the neurotransmitters GAGA and glutamate.
The effect of neurotransmitters in bipolar disorder is constantly being studied. As I mentioned at the beginning, serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine have all been implicated - the amount of available messengers, the number of messengers of each in relation to the others, the sensitivity of the receptors and reuptake transporters, and the number of enzymes present in the synapses. Anticonvulsants may work as mood stabilizers for bipolar disorder because they make the brain less "excitable," just as they do in epilepsy but in a different setting.
My goal with "GABAs on the Move" has been to provide an easy-to-understand description of basic neurotransmitter functions. Remember the team messengers and their adventures in Brain Complex as you read other articles!
Thanks to Richard Schuergar, Former About Guide to Neuroscience, for his contributions to this article.
