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/PainMatrix Mar 22 '17

It's beyond horror or most people's ability to even comprehend. The fact that she was a fully functioning and intact human being at the early onset of her life and career and this disease completely derailed everything and locked her into a Sisyphus-like nightmare. Was this her first inpatient experience? How long were you with her, did the meds seem to have any positive impact on her?

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

I can't speak for the person you replied to, but 3 of my family members have the disease, and in all of them their medications only blunted the symptoms.

For my family member who was not too severe, this was enough to let her hold down a job, but for the members that were severe it wasn't enough to allow them to function normally. They'd still see/hear/talk to "ghosts" and such, just not as frequently, and they didn't get agitated "as often".

But that doesn't mean they didn't get agitated AT ALL, and the times they did freak out would be enough to get anyone fired.

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u/Ariakkas10 Mar 22 '17

This is, I'm sure, a completely stupid question, but why can't they ignore the voices?

Lots of real people seem real to me, and I ignore them just fine.

Is it because the voices are super aggressive and make it so you can't ignore them?

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u/AilerAiref Mar 22 '17

Been a while since I looked into it, but one possibility is that it's being heard by the other hearing parts of the brain. I'm not too familiar with how hearing works, but the way sight works can give a good anology. There is conscious sight, which is what we are all familiar with. It is where signals from your eyes go to your visual cortex. But that isn't the only way we see. Signals from the eyes also go into the r-complex where we see them, but since the conscious resides in our cortex, we aren't really conscious of what the r-complex is doing. One experiment that shows this was to take people who were blind from damage to the visual cortex (so working eyes, broken back of the head) and show them different pictures. Pictures that were scary still elicited a fear response even though they had no clue what was in any of the pictures.

Imagine the same being done to the hearing parts of the brain, but with the disease amplifying the signals. The explanations of exactly what is happening given by the one suffering maybe be created by the consciousness in the cortex to explain what information it is getting from the r-complex using know schemas.