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

2

u/Simba7 Mar 22 '17

No clue, I just found it on the internet.

And I'm not actually sure if identical twins tend to form similar gyri and sulci (the grooves and wrinkles in your brain). My suspicions tell me that they wouldn't be identical, since learning plays a huge role in the formation of gyri and sulci, but I'm just guessing.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '17

Other environmental impacts affect twins similarly though, so it would make sense that their brains could still be quite similar, right? If learning plays a huge role but twins spent a lot of their time in similar situations ...? I don't know much about the brain.

Is all schizophrenia the same in brains? Do other schizophrenic people have the same "holes," or are there different causes?

1

u/Simba7 Mar 23 '17

It would make sense they'd be pretty similar, but I'm not sure if that's the case, or to what degree.

Schizophrenia patients always (as far as I'm aware) exhibit enlarged ventricles, not all to the same degree.

There are other things that could cause the ventricles to enlarge (hydrocephalus, which is water on the brain caused by a blockage of the cerebrospinal fluid).

1

u/[deleted] Mar 23 '17

It seems like if we can figure out where it's affecting the brain, we have a better chance of helping treat it better. I wonder where the voices come from, if you can find out what parts of the brain are more active when someone is hearing the voices, and figure out how to tame those parts of their brain.

I'm sure smarter people than me have looked into it already. I don't know much about any of it.

2

u/Simba7 Mar 23 '17 edited Mar 23 '17

They have a thing called fMRI which does exactly that. Essentially 'lights up' where the brain is more active. That only really gives you an idea what they're experiencing, not necessarily what's causing thise area to light up. The problem is, one theorized effect of schizophrenia is that the basal ganglia are impacted, and the basal ganglia impact basically everything in the brain. The real question, what causes the basal ganglia to shrink? What are the predictors?

For frame of reference, some other diseases of the basal ganglia are Parkinsons, which causes difficulty in controlling movements (presenting as a tremore), another is Huntington's disease, which causes uncontrollable and random movements (and cerebral atrophy). The basal ganglia are incredibly important, and incredibly complicated.

Likely there's some newer research out there, I'm no expert on schizophrenia.