What does science think schizophrenia is?

[MinnesotaBrant]

What does science currently believe schizophrenia is? I heard that one theory was that it was random impuses, and this might be true in some cases, but, I remember being so schizophrenic that I couldnt read the street signs and after a time hearing voices that were telling me what the signs were. They also said remember when we used to help you? And in fact, for quite awhile, I was using voices to agument intelligence, to provide answers to facts I didn't have, and quips, I didn't think of myself. What do you believe it is?

 

[Marduk]

you've asked two questions there, not only what is it, but what causes it

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a breakdown of thought processes and by poor emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social or occupational dysfunction

as for what causes it, currently scientific thought has it as a result of genetic and environmental factors combined.

I think its a nightmare

 

[MinnesotaBrant]

Nope I didnt say anything about what causes it, just what you think it is. As far as it being a nightmare, you might be right about that. But the voices that day did guide me home safely so it cant be all bad.

 

[Marduk]

Nope I didnt say anything about what causes it, just what you think it is. As far as it being a nightmare, you might be right about that. But the voices that day did guide me home safely so it cant be all bad.

ya, but as those voices don't exist and are products of your imagination it was in fact you who guided yourself home safely. Thats how the rest of us do it too

 

[Rolfe]

Yes, Marduk, I think he realises this. You're not helping.

Rolfe.

 

[MinnesotaBrant]

I couldnt read the signs and wasnt compentent enough to look at them so it had to be some sort of esp. I suppose it also could have been some sort of internal map I was using but going by internal map is pretty inaccurate for me. I was wandering for some time before the internals took over.

 

[Dancing David]

What does science currently believe schizophrenia is? I heard that one theory was that it was random impuses, and this might be true in some cases, but, I remember being so schizophrenic that I couldnt read the street signs and after a time hearing voices that were telling me what the signs were. They also said remember when we used to help you? And in fact, for quite awhile, I was using voices to agument intelligence, to provide answers to facts I didn't have, and quips, I didn't think of myself. What do you believe it is?

I believe it is a complex of different dysfunctions involving similar systems, there are at least five wide categories of schizophrenia and everyone seems to have subtle variations.

There are great difference between the people who mainly hear voices and those who mainly have delusions, some have more disorganization. There are also , and more confusing, different expressions of the negative symptoms.

I knew some people who said they were like loud thoughts, and other people who said they were like people talking to them, or jesus or some specific person.

It may well be that your voices were different and experssed an intelligent part of your self.

The other issue is that in the early stages of schizophrenia there is usually an apparent mood feature of something like mania, that usually goes away later. So it can be confusing especially for people who have psychosis with bipolar disorder. So often the differential diagnosis with bipolar and schizoaffective disorder takes a long time.

Substance abuse does not help.

 

[Dancing David]

I couldnt read the signs and wasnt compentent enough to look at them so it had to be some sort of esp. I suppose it also could have been some sort of internal map I was using but going by internal map is pretty inaccurate for me. I was wandering for some time before the internals took over.

Or it could have been a delay in the verbal part of your brain that was shunted into an auditory hallucination. It would have taken testing of teh features at the time to reach any conclusions.

 

[Dancing David]

ya, but as those voices don't exist and are products of your imagination it was in fact you who guided yourself home safely. Thats how the rest of us do it too

They are not products of the imagination if they are hallucinations, they are invalid perceptions. They appear perfectly real to the person having them, they are spurious or invalid, but quite real. They are just not associated with external senstaions, so they are sometimes labelled internal stimuli.

 

[Cavemonster]

Yes, Marduk, I think he realises this. You're not helping.

I couldnt read the signs and wasnt compentent enough to look at them so it had to be some sort of esp.

Rolfe, I think you're incorrect.

MNBrant, part of your question seems to be how the voices you heard could possess information you did not if they were internal to you. I don't know much about the mechanics of schizophrenia, but I think other experiments shed some light on how strangely information gets moved around in the brain.

In split brain tests, the corpus collosum was severed, diconnecting some of the information exchange between brain hemispheres. Patients experienced a disconnect between vision of either eye, between speaking and writing and drawing.

A patient with a split brain, when shown an image in his or her left visual field (the left half of what both eyes take in, see optic tract), will be unable to vocally name what he or she has seen. This is because the speech-control center is in the left side of the brain in most people, and the image from the left visual field is sent only to the right side of the brain (those with the speech control center in the right side will experience similar symptoms when an image is presented in the right visual field). Since communication between the two sides of the brain is inhibited, the patient cannot name what the right side of the brain is seeing. The person can, however, pick up and show recognition of an object (one within the left overall visual field) with their left hand, since that hand is controlled by the right side of the brain.

It is entirely possible that while you did not experience vision as you are used to it, your eyes perceived the information and conveyed it to you through the language parts of the brain rather than the visual parts, which seem to be *somewhat* specialized by hemisphere. People take in information constantly without being aware of it on the surface.

 

[Tatyana]

I think one of the easiest ways to describe schizophrenia is that there are no filters for all the stimulus coming into the brain, so it sort of over loads the brain and it operates in a different manner than what we consider 'normal'.

My sister has schizoid affective disorder, she is what most psychiatrists refer to as a 'high functioning person with schizophrenia'.

It has been awhile since I did any reading on schizophrenia, and I often start with the NHS website, and the latest thing that struck me was that there is a risk factor with pre-eclampsia.

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Schizophrenia/Pages/Causes.aspx

 

[MinnesotaBrant]

Hm, I am high functioning in the extreme. I have no negative symptoms of my schizophrenia usually. Doing tests they say that I do better than the PHD student control when they say anything at all. I was walking out of hell at the time so as you can imagine that is a hard thing to do. The voices did help but I really didn't converse with them. I suppose it could be some sort of internal map such as what blind people use to find their way around. This has to be developed though.

 

[Bill Thompson]

The NAMI class I just took taught us that schizophrenia is a physical brain malfunction caused by the nerve cells not forming fast enough in the skull before birth. They have more nerves bundled at the base of the brain than other people.

When thinking about visual input, the frontal lobe of the brains of most people are active. With schizophrenia, the brain misfires and the part of the brain that processes images is inactive and other places of the brain not designed for this, tries to compensate.

 

[MinnesotaBrant]

The NAMI class I just took taught us that schizophrenia is a physical brain malfunction caused by the nerve cells not forming fast enough in the skull before birth. They have more nerves bundled at the base of the brain than other people.

When thinking about visual input, the frontal lobe of the brains of most people are active. With schizophrenia, the brain misfires and the part of the brain that processes images is inactive and other places of the brain not designed for this, tries to compensate.

I dont think that schizophrenia can be detected yet by a MRI. This sounds like a theory more or less. I think that some people get more or less valuable information from their voices at times. Its more than just misfiring.

 

[Bill Thompson]

I dont think that schizophrenia can be detected yet by a MRI. This sounds like a theory more or less. I think that some people get more or less valuable information from their voices at times. Its more than just misfiring.

I took a class.

This is what I remember.

My gut feeling is that this is light years ahead of the all the supposition posted here.

Plus, I have notes. I will quote them later.

 

[MinnesotaBrant]

sure post them.

 

[ExMinister]

The NAMI class I just took taught us that schizophrenia is a physical brain malfunction caused by the nerve cells not forming fast enough in the skull before birth. They have more nerves bundled at the base of the brain than other people.

When thinking about visual input, the frontal lobe of the brains of most people are active. With schizophrenia, the brain misfires and the part of the brain that processes images is inactive and other places of the brain not designed for this, tries to compensate.

That is interesting about the nerve cells not forming fast enough before birth. Hadn't heard that yet. Have read quite a bit about the brain findings on MRI, and found it interesting that when a SZ hears an auditory hallucination it registers in the same part of the brain where actual hearing of external sound registers.

 

[ExMinister]

I dont think that schizophrenia can be detected yet by a MRI. This sounds like a theory more or less. I think that some people get more or less valuable information from their voices at times. Its more than just misfiring.

Yes, there are quite a few studies done where MRI has been able to demonstrate physiological changes in schizoprenic brains.

It may help to keep in mind that some people get more or less valuable creative information from lucid dream characters also, but it is still a brain phenomenon. Many times I have awakened from these dreams feeling like I've just been given some insight or advice that I couldn't possibly have thought of on my own. At other times I have awakened thinking I'd been given amazing advice only to write it down and find out it's mostly gibberish.

 

[Dancing David]

I dont think that schizophrenia can be detected yet by a MRI. This sounds like a theory more or less. I think that some people get more or less valuable information from their voices at times. Its more than just misfiring.

I am not sure about the way BT put it but there are things about the dopamine pathways, that may represent differentials in development, which are possible vulnerabilities to schizophrenia. It is not so much that the brain does growth fast or slow but that the path the neuron follows as it grows varies.

 

[MinnesotaBrant]

The folks at NIMPH said that they couldn't yet detect schizophrenia with a MRI. There might be severely damaged folks where this deterioration is true though.