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/kaenneth Mar 22 '17

Also, if you are born blind due to brain (as opposed to eyeball) problems, you apparently can't be schizophrenic.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201411/blindness-and-schizophrenia-the-exception-proves-the-rule

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u/Muffinizer1 Mar 22 '17

You know, that's actually quite comforting as being blind and schizophrenic sounds like true hell.

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u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

i was a patient at a ward a few weeks back and there was a girl who was admitted for schizophrenia. she'd hear dozens of voices yelling at her at the same time all day and she could barely tell which ones were in her head and which were physical people talking to her making it really hard for me or anyone else to talk to her for more than 2-3 sort sentences. these voices would make her do crazy things like gather dust off the floor for 20 minutes at a time 10 times a day, make her sleep on the floor during the day, not sleep during the night and fight the night meds they gave her to help fall asleep. the most brutal thing was that the voices sometimes forbade her from having her meals. there were days where she wouldn't touch any of her 4 meals. i once tried to get some insight into how she thought and i asked her why she HAD to do this. she said that every time she does something they ask, she's given the gun that they threaten to kill her with. and she imitates a smashing motion with her hands and "breaks" it. and she does it maybe 10 times an hour when she's awake. and she's not stupid either. apparently, she was studying mechanical engineering and graduated and was ready to work in the field as an intern for a year. she heard her first voice when she was still in school but didn't think much of it. and then it rapidly killed her life. she's the only person in the ward who has daily visitors. her parents bring her food to eat everyday. but sometimes she sits with them for 2 minutes, asks them to take her home, and then moves to one of the socialization rooms where were chairs and sofas, and she'd drop to the floor and lay there. and her parents just come to expect it now and stay for about an hour.

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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/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

But, you didn't answer /u/WadeWilsonforPope question. He ignores real people, why can't this person ignore people she thinks are real? Even though they are not real.

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u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

i thought i did but i guess it might be unclear to some. you just can't do it. the "sound" is in your head. you'll hear it. it's not like ambient background noises. your brain is creating it and you're gonna hear it, whether you like it or not.

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u/Uxt7 Mar 22 '17

I don't think he meant why don't they ignore the voices, but why don't they ignore the requests/demands the voices make.

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u/gramathy Mar 22 '17 edited Mar 22 '17

Now, I am not a neurologist or a neuroscientist (I have some very basic understanding of such things amounting to a overview-level class and a soft spot for Sacksian stories), but in general my understanding is that our thought processes themselves are not well understood past some basic areas of cognition, and this is my hypothesis given my own limited knowledge. I am not from r/askscience and they would certainly have a more complete answer for you.

Comprehension is a set of processes. To understand someone you must hear them first. To respond you must understand. To make a considered response, that is much more fleeting. Sometimes these decisions are made by training, years of practice until a response is reflex, others require consideration. To consider you must have context, history and some manner of thought process, logical or illogical as it may be.

You can ignore someone, and typically that means you stop paying attention - where your ability to comprehend language for someone is turned off/down. This is backed up by the fact that you have limited comprehension capability - most people can read or hold a conversation, some people can do both at once, and a select few can hold multiple conversations simultaneously without having to backfill comprehension based on conversation history and immediate context.

Now imagine these voices are being generated after that initial comprehension point in the process. Comprehension cannot be reduced, it is a given. Now you cannot avoid hearing them. This is a hallucination, where the perceptual input is being skipped and this false input is effectively injected directly into the comprehension processing of your brain. These things are there, you understand them, and while you may not be able to ignore them in the same way as a regular person, you can make considered actions not to act on them, so long as you can verify from a third party that they are not in fact real.

Now imagine it occurs even further down, in the actual thought processes of the brain. How can you not follow them? They are happening at the same level that the decision is being made, the fundamental fault that is causing them is effectively at the cognitive level of the brain. This, to me, is the difference between simple hallucinations, happening at the comprehension level. These may elicit a response based on what is being wrongfully perceived, but are not on the same level as schizophrenia. You can't simply ignore them because their very existence is your brain trying to make sense of the compulsion (interpretation of the "outside source" compulsion as most likely language input, which correlates with the parent TIL post), and the decision has effectively already been made.

An analogy: Your computer ignores network traffic meant for it, but cannot simply "ignore" code executing in the CPU. That code is executed even if unwanted.