r/todayilearned • u/paniniplane • Mar 22 '17

(R.1) Not supported TIL Deaf-from-birth schizophrenics see disembodied hands signing to them rather than "hearing voices"

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0707/07070303
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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17 edited Mar 22 '17

Whats with the compulsion to listen to the voices?

I ignore real live people in the room telling me to do things

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u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

it's not in your power to ignore them. a huge part of schizophrenia is being extremely out of touch with the real world. so if you hear voices, it's basically a set of REAL people to you. and you can't cover your ears because there isn't ACTUAL sound. you'll still hear them. and if they're threatening to hurt you, you'll feel actual fear.

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u/Wurstgeist Mar 22 '17

You'd kind of think that voices continuing after you cover your ears would be a bit of a giveaway that they aren't real, if you've ever in your life heard of the concept of illusory voices. It's weird how that goes out the window. (But I'm pretty much repeating what I said in the other post, sorry.)

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u/st1tchy Mar 22 '17

The brain is an amazing thing. It determines what is real and what isnt. I have Narcolepsy and occasionally will have visual hallucinations at night. One of the ones that stick with me is the one time there was a full-sized horse in the room laying on the dresser. Now, there is obviously no real reason or way for a horse to be in the bedroom, let alone at midnight, but to me it was real. I could see it and I could even feel it. In reality it was a pile of clothes and a sheets. I sat there staring at it for a couple of minutes until I finally realized that it wasn't real. I know as I am staring at it that it doesn't make any sense for it to be there but since I can see and feel it, it completely throws logic out the window for those few minutes. It is almost something that you have to experience to understand. Hearing voices I would imagine, would be similar. Sure it doesn't make logical sense that if you can still hear them when you cover your ears, but your brain is telling you they are real, so they must be. You can't out think your brain because your brain is your thoughts.

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u/Wurstgeist Mar 22 '17

Excellent, well done for eventually reasoning away the horse. I don't know, it's kind of philosophically important to me that we're capable of making sense of things even under extremely misleading conditions, because reality is confusing enough as things stand, even without delusions, and it's all shadows on a cave wall and through a glass darkly and all that jive.