Schizophrenia: The new etiological synthesis

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763422003839

by besmirch • 4 years ago

97 121 4 years ago

c54• 4 years ago

Parasite based, interesting.

Half joking but the shift from understanding szr as an intrinsic psychological condition versus being causally related to parasites remind me hilariously of the midichlorians reveal in star wars.

radicaldreamer• 4 years ago

I think we'll probably see a lot of this kind of synthesis as our ability to model grows stronger.

Seeing yourself as a collection of billions of separate but symbiotic, sometimes competing organisms rather than as one coherent one is a big paradigm shift which will likely result in a lot of fruitful theories and hopefully eventually treatments for disease and illness.

Crucially, we're getting to a place where we can model some of this and then directly attack several other pieces which were inaccessible to us before due to sheer amount of complexity.

monknomo• 4 years ago

Also similar to the Epstein-Barr virus link to MS

bitL5• 4 years ago

So Ivermectin for everyone?

bawolff• 4 years ago

I was under the impression that ivermectin wouldn't affect a protozoa.

And even if it did, it wouldnt pass the blood brain barrier so it would be useless here.

[I am not a doctor and dont know what im talking]

oliveshell• 4 years ago

Okay, this is fascinating.

The fact that “schizophrenia is rare or nonexistent in hunter-gatherer populations” is particularly interesting.

I had no idea this was the case.

Clearly there is much more research to be done, but I feel like the authors are on the right track here.

berberous2• 4 years ago

Similarly interesting:

“The striking difference was that while many of the African and Indian subjects registered predominantly positive experiences with their voices, not one American did. Rather, the U.S. subjects were more likely to report experiences as violent and hateful – and evidence of a sick condition.“

pyinstallwoes6• 4 years ago

Seems related to how one might associate oneself to perspectives under religion. Vedic adjacent religions seem to cater to having a relationship with many entities of various forms.

bitL5• 4 years ago

Wasn't schizophrenia identified as basically off-by-one (multiple?) error of the deletion algorithm in the brain that is garbage collecting more (glial?) cells in a row than needed during teenage years? And "overclocking" glial cells by adding large quantities of Niacin/NAD+ partially alleviates those symptoms?

0x4d464d482• 4 years ago

No.

conviencefee999• 4 years ago

It's a neurological disorder and is more complicated than a one off bit, especially when it involved the entire CNS because it's associated with the brain. Many of these issues can't be cured as easy as flipping a bit.

bitL5• 4 years ago

I mean if it is an unrecoverable loss of glial cells during puberty (AFAIK most diagnoses start during that time) then nobody would be able to "flip the bit" back anyway. As glial cells feed and protect neurons, their lack will likely have unrepairable consequences, unless the remaining ones are somewhat boosted to partially cover the functionality of the missing ones. I am interested in this topic because a cousin has inherited it from her father's family (super intelligent people) and their family life is destroyed from it. They basically just manage symptoms with regular crazy periods when one medication ceases to function and they have to switch to another one that might not work.

zwkrt• 4 years ago

At the very least there seem to be 10s of causes of schizophrenia and just as many different manifestations of it. Similar to cancer or depression in that regard.

bitL5• 4 years ago

Yes, so another umbrella diagnosis that can have 100s different reasons with the same outward symptoms. Like some people with pellagra exhibiting the same symptoms but when their nutrition improves long-term, they get completely cured from it. I only remember some Harvard/Stanford or similar article in the past five years about deleted cells because of a genetic defect akin to off-by-one error in programs.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003331827...

tomrod• 4 years ago

I will rejoice if this leads to effective treatment. Our family has a close relative who is afflicted with it. It's a world of chaos for everyone in their orbit.

viburnum• 4 years ago

Is it safe for children to live with cats?

hackerman1234692• 4 years ago

Is it safe to live?

ipnon• 4 years ago

"Living in an urban environment during childhood or as an adult has consistently been found to increase the risk of schizophrenia by a factor of two."[0] While city life is as complex of a confounding factor as anything, the fact that they found hunter-gatherers have practically no incidence of SZR is interesting. Is the modern megalopolis simply too intense of a stimulus for the minds of the sensitive to handle without splitting into pieces?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia#Environmental

nine_k• 4 years ago

Does schizophrenia occur more often in people with certain genetic traits? Does the majority of people with such traits live in urban environments, e.g. in highly urbanized countries?

(No idea; just a hypothesis to test.)

jamiek88• 4 years ago

More likely to be diagnosed in a city too I would imagine.

diyseguy• 4 years ago

Hunter gatherer societies no doubt considered them to be shamans or treated them with psychedelics

kayodelycaon3• 4 years ago

I'm bipolar and I'd definitely would be a shaman or prophet. I've got the right balance of intelligence and crazy for it.

tiahura• 4 years ago

Or pushed them off a cliff.

retrac• 4 years ago

I suspect, if this effect is real, it has more to do with social supports, the size of the social group, and maybe also metaphysical/religious beliefs and attitudes. People who have a worldview like "Demonic possession is real! And no big deal! Happpens to everyone from time to time!" skew non-urban. They may well interact, socially and emotionally speaking, with schizophrenic relatives and community members, in a better and healthier way, than we, in all our enlightenment, do. A case of minor thought disorder, for example, can probably either be aggravated or lessened based on the social response to it. The secular Westerner may not think schizophrenics are demon-possessed, but we sure tend to treat them like they are cursed.

hindsightbias• 4 years ago

I read an article once about treatment of schizophrenics in an African country. Basically put in a single cage but monitored and treated well. Westerners saw it as barbaric, but the local culture saw them as being possessed in a good or bad way and most recovered in a month and there was a ceremony to welcome them back from their journey. No negative societal MH stigma attached to it.

Medically, not sure about it, but culturally seems more mature than we have.

bodhiandphysics• 4 years ago

I think a more likely reason why hunter gatherers don't have aren't prone to schizophrenia (in this model) is that it was evolutionarily bread out of them. Hunter gatherers in the modern world are extremely weird populations that are often under intense selective pressure!

ksaxena• 4 years ago

This may be better explained by the Hygiene hypothesis - hunter-gatherers get exposure to all sorts of microbes and parasites early in their life while city-dwellers could be shielded from equivalent exposure. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis

JamesLeonis• 4 years ago

The study directly tackles this question in section 3, including why it is very rare in hunter-gatherer societies.

We suggest that one reason why the prevalence of psychosis among people with hunter-gatherer and traditional lifestyles is so much lower than in people with contemporary western lifestyles is due to chronic stress and low-grade systemic inflammation caused by western lifestyle.

Why is chronic stress important? It brings impaired immune response and chronic inflammation. This lets a number of parasites through the door, one of which is _Toxoplasma gondii_, the mind-control parasite that causes mice to not fear cats.

In light of the parasite x genotype x stress model, a probable explanation for why living in cities increases the risk of schizophrenia is increased chronic stress caused by urban living (see Lederbogen et al., 2011). City living is associated with increased amygdala activity and affects the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex, a key region for regulation of amygdala activity, negative affect, and stress (Lederbogen et al., 2011). Functional magnetic resonance imaging research has shown that city living and urban upbringing are associated with altered neural processing of acute social stress (Lederbogen et al., 2011). There is also substantial evidence indicating that visiting green spaces and being exposed to natural environments reduce psychological stress (Ewert and Chang, 2018).
Living in cities can increase contact with Toxoplasma gondii through domestic cats because cats have a more limited choice of defecation sites in urban areas (Torrey and Yolken, 2014). Likewise, it is possible that the high prevalence of schizophrenia among people with contemporary western lifestyles compared to hunter-gatherers might be caused by the higher prevalence of domestic cats and diseases associated with them. It is also possible that contemporary western lifestyles and living in cities negatively influence gut health and gut microbiota (Fig. 1). Further evidence for this hypothesis comes from findings showing that people with hunter-gatherer lifestyles have more diverse microbiota than people with contemporary western lifestyles (Sanchez-Quinto et al., 2020, Segata, 2015, Singh et al., 2019, Yatsunenko et al., 2012).

m0llusk• 4 years ago

The effect is stronger than that as it scales with population densities. Geoffrey West's works explore this in some detail.

0x4d464d482• 4 years ago

Wonderful!

I've worked in the mental health field for years and when it comes to treating diseases like schiziphreina the go to model has been to give drugs to manage symptoms. There were a bunch of models for what _could_ be happening but there was no solid etiology for what is actually happening.

Gut inflamation along with a bunch of correlations with infections and autoimmune issues have been noted for years. Yet, there hasn't been a foundation setup to truly answer what _IS_ schizophrenia etiologically speaking.

Schiziphrenia is a heart-wrenching disease both for the people suffering from it and for their loved ones. Seeing papers like this give me tremendous hope.

Dig1t2• 4 years ago

It is therefore possible that the behavioral changes induced by Toxoplasma in humans, including suicidality, are a part of its adaptations to increase the probability that our ancestors were eaten by lions or leopards

What the what

berberous2• 4 years ago

I am skeptical that most suicidal people, who may idealize or even follow through on shooting or hanging themselves, would willingly let themselves be eaten by a lion. Fight or flight adrenaline in the face of big cats feels like a likely effective cure for suicidal ideation…

rrrrrrrrrrrr26• 4 years ago

Normally, a protozoan is not very likely to end up in a cat’s gut because rodents instinctively fear cats. In Toxoplasma-infected rodents, however, the fear of cats disappears (Vyas et al., 2007). The mere smell of a cat normally makes rodents flee, but rodents infected with Toxoplasma experience the smell of cat as sexually attractive (Berdoy et al., 2000, House et al., 2011). This makes them seek out cats, making Toxoplasma-infected rodents more likely to end up as cat food. These rodents still avoid other predators as before (Berdoy et al., 2000, House et al., 2011). The reversal of this innate fear reaction helps the protozoan reach its definitive host, a cat, and to propagate its genes to future generations.

kayodelycaon3• 4 years ago

I'd think that likely. Ideation is easy. Actually pulling the trigger is difficult. Survival instincts are strong.

bglazer2• 4 years ago

In the paper, they hypothesize that the route of transmission would have been big cats scavenging human remains after suicide.

Of course this, like all evolutionary psychology, is basically unknowable and highly susceptible to just-so story telling

jamal-kumar• 4 years ago

Actually you might be surprised [1] [2] [3]

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/africa/lion-kills-man-g...

[2] https://www.telegraphindia.com/west-bengal/calcutta/alipore-...

[3] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3602819/Naked-man-j...

pyinstallwoes6• 4 years ago

That sounds like the bacteria that makes ants hang off of leaves to get eaten by predators to spread the parasite. Similar to that cat pee bacteria thing.

jasonhansel• 4 years ago

Does cat ownership cause toxoplasmosis, or does toxoplasmosis make you want to be around cats?

AuryGlenz• 4 years ago

There aren’t many people that have more than 2-3 dogs. You can’t say the same for cat people.

WhackyIdeas15• 4 years ago

Fascinating. I self-diagnosed myself with schizophrenia once. A horrible 6 months locked in an alien world where all I could think about was time and space (at about a million miles a second). I would hear chatter in my head and was convinced I was overhearing random conversations people were having and was even certain of the locations they were having these conversations. The idea that we all shared one consciousness and that time and space was an illusion would give me constant panic attacks every day. I would look at tv and faces would warp, become big and small. It was like living inside a nightmare.

But then I broke out of it in an instant 6 months later whilst I was trying to distract my thoughts by focusing on the shoes that peoples were wearing inside a busy train station - I started to find it amusing how silly people looked in certain styles etc. Who knows, I was out of my mind. What a feeling.

teshigahara3• 4 years ago

I have PTSD from extremely bad psychedelic trips and this comment made me cringe (my PTSD must be getting better because I think at one point it would have given me a panic attack). I don't think I could have handled 6 months of that.

WhackyIdeas15• 4 years ago

It begun for me after smoking weed one night - in a flash I was outside my body with an extreme panic attack and the sudden belief that I was inside essentially a game. This first panic attack lasted around an hour or two. It was horrendous. Your PTSD is something you can manage, I have it too. It gets better and weaker as the years go on. For myself, this all happened 18 years ago but it made me a stronger person.

gavinray2• 4 years ago

You're not the only one, how many of us out there?

pyinstallwoes6• 4 years ago

I can share the sentiment. I got stuck in a few loops on psychedelics and it was tumultuous to say the least. Overall it was a net positive effect but it’s certainly not the only way for “enlightenment.” It’s perhaps the most masochist path to enlightenment. Perhaps Alan Watts said that.

janeerie• 4 years ago

Dang, this did give me a panic attack. The sort of thing OP describes is my greatest fear, and I have a hard time dealing with the fact that it really happens to some people.

IAmGraydon• 4 years ago

What you are describing sounds like a protracted psychotic break. Schizophrenia doesn’t just come one day and disappear 6 months later.

WhackyIdeas15• 4 years ago

Maybe you are right. I watched a Netflix doc on schizophrenia a few days ago, and it was ‘check, check, check’ for nearly every symptom. I suppose there’s a lot of overlap with the more extreme mental health issues.

refurb• 4 years ago

Not usually, but schizophrenia is a waxing and waning disease like MS - patients tend to get episodes of worsening symptoms then remission (partial) where symptoms get better. Then they’ll get another relapse and often it’s worse, eventually resulting in a state of chronic symptoms.

Treatment with antipsychotic medication can actually “pause” the cycles and prevent the disease from getting worse if started early. It’s definitely a progressive disease.

I always thought of schizophrenia as a disease you just got and always had.

WhackyIdeas15• 4 years ago

I think what helped me brake out of too is that I learned to accept (and not fight) the possibility that we are all living in an illusion, and that we are all sharing the same consciousness and that it’s the job of all our senses; eyes, ears, etc to keep us efficiently preoccupied. Maybe I was just struck by philosopher lightening! Haha!

pyinstallwoes6• 4 years ago

In a way, it gives an aroma of truth to reality is all perspective. It’s fascinating to think that mental models affect the rendering of reality. Language enforces a particular constraint on its own.

zoklet-enjoyer• 4 years ago

Sounds like manic psychosis too. My ex loses touch with consensus reality sometimes when she's manic. It's frightening trying to interact with her and it's like she's not there.

WhackyIdeas15• 4 years ago

I have been in a similar place with a partner too. It is a terrifying state I have never seen in anyone else before… pure catatonic episodes. But there was a level of extreme paranoia and at times I would be accused of conspiring with an ex (who I didn’t know) to ‘get’ her. This particular relationship that I had was extremely tough and left lasting damage on me - enough for me to avoid any intimate relationship for a few years till i could recover. I hope she is doing better now.

jwilber• 4 years ago

If it’s the case that it’s driven by some organism/parasite/virus, it’s interesting that there’s a prevalence for certain age groups to get it over others (or rather, it is much more rare to get after certain ages). Maybe some combination of genetic factors or comorbidities at play as well.

Would love to learn more. Especially how this relates to other disorders eg OCD, bipolar disorder, etc.

DoreenMichele• 4 years ago

While the parasite is found throughout the world, more than 40 million people in the United States may be infected with the Toxoplasma parasite.

Once a diagnosis of toxoplasmosis is confirmed, you and your health care provider can discuss whether treatment is necessary. In an otherwise healthy person who is not pregnant, treatment usually is not needed. If symptoms occur, they typically go away within a few weeks to months. For pregnant women or persons who have weakened immune systems, medications are available to treat toxoplasmosis.

https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/toxoplasmosis/gen_info/faqs.ht...

Maybe we should make it more of a priority to treat it rather than be all "Meh. Not symptomatic. Moving on."

esdott• 4 years ago

This! So this. We also need to reestablish “chronic” as a word with only bad connotations; not something that means it’s ok to live with chronic diseases like t1d or x-arthritis’. Solving the overactive immune system will solve an outsized portion of what’s afflicting western populations. Depression, chronic fatigue, any auto immune disorder, etc.

rrrrrrrrrrrr26• 4 years ago

I think the main tangible risk is if you have an autoimmune disorder such as HIV.

Seems like the reason for not treating in general is that human guts are already infested with all sorts of relatively harmless bacteria (and protozoa, etc.). And the drugs to treat toxoplasmosis, which are certain antimalarials and antibiotics, carry some risk. A big risk is that, if you nuke your gut biome with 1-3 antibiotics for everything you get infected with, and they develop resistance which spreads horizontally, it could prevent antibiotics from saving your life when you're infected with something serious.

That being said, if there's a link established between t. gandii infection and suicidality, I'd speculate you'll see lots of pressure from the public health folks for treating all infections.

This is not medical advice and I am not a doctor. I have time to sit in an armchair and argue about toxoplasmosis on a Friday night. Please take that into account.

a9h74j• 4 years ago

Dozens of potential mechanisms described, with none uniquely convincing IMHO. One interesting suggestion is the group splitting hypothesis:

The group-splitting hypothesis of schizophrenia (Stevens and Price, 2000) posits that proliferating tribal communities must eventually split to maintain optimum numbers. According to this hypothesis, schizotypal traits in certain prominent individuals may be advantageous to ensure survival of the offshoot group. These prominent individuals could use paranoia, delusions, religious themes, and neologisms to fraction disaffected groups and to seed new cultures.

getpost2• 4 years ago

This seems consistent with Chris Palmer's hypothesis, that mental disorders are metabolic disorders of the brain, discussed in his new book Brain Energy[0]. He's done lots of podcast interviews[1], if you don't want to read the book.

[0] https://www.chrispalmermd.com/ [1] https://www.listennotes.com/search/?q=chris%20palmer%20md&so...

bglazer2• 4 years ago

In what way is this consistent? The authors describe toxoplasma infection forming cysts in the brain as a result of immune response. The cysts then release neurotransmitters, primarily dopamine and glutamate, which presumably causes the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia.

What does that have to do with metabolism?

getpost2• 4 years ago

The idea that toxoplasmosis is a contributing factor to mental illness is decades old. This paper is merely an incremental restatement of that hypothesis. The abstract says, "Instead of just alleviating symptoms with drugs, the parasite x genotype x stress model emphasizes that schizophrenia treatment should focus on detecting and treating possible underlying microbial infection(s), neuroinflammation, gut dysbiosis, and chronic stress."

Chris Palmer's treatment emphasizes reduction of inflammation and dysbiosis via dietary means. This hypothesis is not limited to treatment of schizophrenia, but also other mental illness, such as bipolar disorder. The following two recent podcasts are illuminating.

https://www.psychiatrypodcast.com/psychiatry-psychotherapy-p...

https://www.rickhanson.net/being-well-podcast-evolving-our-a...

chivalrytwo• 4 years ago

I recommend the book The Schizophrenias - Ours to conquer by Carl C. Pfeiffer. It divides schizophrenia into several phenotypes that have metabolic causations.

I used to have manic episodes for my whole life, but managed without medication. After I fixed my histamine oversupply in the body around march(by cutting folic acid and histamine-rich foods from my diet and taking L-methylfolate supplements), I haven't had another episode.

I used to have allergies and crazy food cravings for sugar and other unhealthy stuff because of the histamine issues which are gone now. This phenotype is called histadelia.

Then there is histapenia, where you have too much copper accumulated in your body and it can’t get rid of them unless you take higher doses of zinc and mangan(and a chelator to avoid complications). Folate and histamine levels are too low.

Overall B-Vitamins are pretty important. If you need them its way higher doses than RDA(b3, b6, b2)

Thyroid problems can be involved in schizophrenia, aswell as gluten intolerance.

Also recommend the books by Dr. Abram Hoffer.

djaouen3• 4 years ago

As someone formally diagnosed with schizophrenia, I would say the worst parts of it are anhedonia and stigma. Anhedonia means we can just rot in our apartments for days at a time getting nothing accomplished and stigma prevents us from working even when we overcome the mountain that is anhedonia. Honestly, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

johndhi2• 4 years ago

My brother was diagnosed with same and certainty suffers from anhedonia to this day.

You seriously think the public stigma is one of the "worst" things about it? Almost no one my brother encounters knows about his diagnosis and yet he suffers a lot. I sort of doubt other people's opinions are of primary significance in that, although perhaps his perception of how others see him does seem a bit problem

djaouen3• 4 years ago

Think about it: how likely is it for an employer to hire someone who self-discloses schizophrenia? And if you choose not to disclose, how do you explain the gaps in your resume when you were involuntarily committed or recovering from a recurring series of episodes? Stigma still plays a big role, even in today’s society. Edit: And that is to say nothing of the problems you face if you are kicked out of the hospital with no place to go. Schizophrenia is a scary illness, bro.

pasquinelli• 4 years ago

my dad had schizophrenia and he starved himself to death because he thought most food and water was poison. he was estranged from his family and was on the streets off and on, mostly because he was ashamed. he on some level knew he was delusional and was ashamed of it, which you would think would undermine his delusion, but i suppose fear comes first.

m463• 4 years ago

I would imagine anosognosia could be worse. I know someone who delayed diagnosis and treatment because they didn't believe anything was wrong with them (although it was obvious to everyone around them)

As an anlogy, consider how hard it would be to convince a random person they have to take diabetes medication if they don't have it. It is the same way convincing a schizophrenic person with anosognosia to take antipsychotic medication.

gomijacogeo• 4 years ago

What you're describing as anhedonia also includes avolition. At least in my case, there are three components that feed back into each other: avolition - that lack of impulse to do ... anything, even when there are strong stimuli; executive dysfunction - even if you're ready to act, a sense of being overwhelmed by choices and unable to put one foot in front of another; and anhedonia - even if you're finally doing something pleasant or productive, there's absolutely no mental reward or lasting sense of accomplishment to build upon. A row-row-row-your-boat of suck as it were.

mjfl• 4 years ago

Schizophrenia (SZR) is rare or nonexistent in hunter-gatherer populations.

People really bend over backwards to insist that schizophrenia is not iatrogenic.

jasfi• 4 years ago

If you're interested in mental health, check out Pyroluria, which has been found to co-exist with many mental health conditions, making them worse.

psychphysic8• 4 years ago

I will have to sit down and read this over the weekend.

But I'm a bit put off by its focus on evolutionary origins. It's prevalence is circa 1% (claimed in article at 0.76%), that's too rare to really gun for an evolutionary basis like you do for cystic fibrosis or sickle cell.

Circa 1/30 carries the CF gene which shows Mendelian inheritance and so we week a evolutionary basis.

dredmorbius2• 4 years ago

I'm reminded of the story I've head (I believe via a podcast, though I cannot presently find the source) on syphilis as a mental-health issue.

The upshot is that cases of syphilitic psychopathy were treated as psychiatric illnesses, that is, strictly disorders of the brain, and there was a substantial network of mental health asylums for housing and treatment of patients.

Successful treatment of the infectious disease syphilis all but eliminated this class of mental health disease, and is among the very few instances of successful management at a public-health level of a category of mental illness. The fact that the psychological disease was entirely based on physical (and specifically infectious) medicine is highly notable.

The mental health sector continues to perform poorly at looking beyond strictly psychological aspects of mental health, and in particular has placed a probably unjustified emphasis on psychotropic medication as opposed to other interventions --- not just of potential infectious-disease causes as with syphilis and posited here for schizophrenia, but of environmental and social factors.

I also suspect that psychiatric / psychological conditions are best considered, similarly to cancer, as a set of symptom clusters, which may have markedly distinct etiologies. Traditional psych focuses more on the symptoms than the etiologies.

It's as if we had an infectious medicine based on, say, runny noses or laboured breathing, without considering cause. (There are areas of physical medicine which do resemble this, and others, such as trauma treatments, in which root cause is relatively insignificant concerning treatment, in at least many cases.)

dredmorbius2• 4 years ago

For the benefit of Future Readers (most likely Future Me), I've tracked down the episode.

It was the 28 October 2019 CBC Ideas episode "What Psychiatrists Still Don't Know About Mental Illness", in which Anne Harrington discusses her book, Mind Fixers. The case of syphilitic psychosis, "general paralysis of the insane", is discussed in chapter 1.

Podcast: <https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/what-psychiatrists-still-don-...>

Book: <https://bookshop.org/p/books/mind-fixers-psychiatry-s-troubl...> <https://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=A04307D5ABF5A467E9B1D1F...>

There are of course many other authors discussing syphilus and mental health, including Thomas Insell, Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health, discussed on the Ezra Klein podcast (and elsewhere).

Podcast/Transcript: <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/podcasts/transcript-ezra-...>

Book: <https://bookshop.org/p/books/healing-our-path-from-mental-il...>

photochemsyn• 4 years ago

Interesting stuff. I often wonder if all humans are just a little schizophrenic, and only when the condition develops do things like auditory hallucinations occur.

One model might be several different people running around in a maze, only able to communicate with each other by shouting over the walls. The brain is the maze, but the fractioning of the individual's identity (internal schizms) is what creates the internal illusion of disassociated individuals. This might even develop into neural schizms, different parts of the brain not actually being able to communicate well with other parts of the brain.

I don't know if that model is even vaguely correct, but it would explain auditory hallucinations, as one part of the brain might only be able to communicate with another by utilizing the auditory channel.

Here's an interesting 1993 paper on the subject, lays out the background:

Diagnosis and Classification of Schizophrenia

available via title search at:

https://scholar.archive.org/

mgarfias2• 4 years ago

Is it possible that the same root causes also trigger cluster-b disorders?

Schizophrenia: The new etiological synthesis

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