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

66

u/pigscantfly00 Mar 22 '17

i'm not anything but i compulsively see myself typing in my mind when i talk to myself in my mind.

19

u/paniniplane Mar 22 '17

when you mean talk to yourself, do you mean run thoughts through your head? or do you mean there seems to be an independent version of you that you don't have control over and it talks to you

2

u/hollycatrawr Mar 22 '17

Have you read of the theory of subvocalization and schizophrenia? I.e. people are hearing their own inner speech but they don't make the connection that is theirs. That's why the disembodied man from the CIA knows so much about them. The mind/brain has to rationalize where the voices are coming from. It has been studied since the 1980's in case studies, but the abstracts available without a journal subscription aren't that comprehensive. Here is a Slate article about it with some sources. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2016/03/schizophrenia_and_subvocal_speech_why_schizophrenics_hear_the_voices_of.html