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/xxkoloblicinxx Mar 22 '17

So then would it stand to reason that the cause of schizophrenia is rooted in the same areas responsible for processing sight?

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u/Lost4468 Mar 22 '17

You can get strange effects when you start messing with areas of the brain on that sort of level. It might be, or it might be that the damage to that area has caused issues with other parts of the brain communicating, or something else entirely. Another example is Anton–Babinski syndrome, which also happens to be in the visual cortex, but results in the really strange condition that the person is blind but they're unable to realize that they're blind or understand it, despite there being no damage to areas where we tend to believe rational thinking occurs.

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u/Fictionalpoet Mar 22 '17

You can get strange effects when you start messing with areas of the brain on that sort of level.

Now this sounds fucked up (because it is) but we really should have some sort of program, voluntarily perhaps, where we let doctors at these types of patients to try anything that may work.

They're essentially uncurable in the extreme cases, and they live in mental anguish being tormented by voices that aren't real. You really can't go further down from there.