 Aripiprazole and Negative Symptoms The novel antipsychotic, aripiprazole, has a unique pharmacological mechanism of action that makes it potentially unique for the amelioration of negative symptoms. Aripiprazole is thought to increase DA activity in the PFC by virtue of its activity as a partial agonist at post-synaptic DA2 receptors Burris et al. 2002. We hypothesize that treatment with aripiprazole will normalize the function of PFC reward circuitry through increased DA functioning in frontal cortical regions OFC, ACC that subserve reward processing. 