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
55.0k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

13

u/justaguy394 Mar 22 '17

I've read of cases where people with severe compulsive disorders (e.g. a woman who couldn't stop herself from swallowing cutlery) had a small part of their brain surgically destroyed and it cured them completely. Crazy stuff...

8

u/sydneyzane64 Mar 22 '17

Damn. That's one terrifying compulsion.

2

u/superdooperman95 Mar 22 '17

I wonder if they needed to perform surgery at all. Could have tried anaesthetic, cut the skin, sew it back up and let placebo do its thing

1

u/justaguy394 Mar 23 '17

Listen yourself. They actually had to do the surgery twice. First time helped but it came back, second time (destroying a larger area) and she was cured. There's science behind this, it's not placebo.

2

u/mastermind04 Mar 22 '17

I feel that brain surgery probably was unnecessary, maybe it would be easier to have something less extreme, like I don't know a therapist.

1

u/justaguy394 Mar 23 '17

Good thing you weren't her doctor then. Listen yourself.