4 Mind 4 Life - New Brain Power Info.

Researchers discover why schizophrenia symptoms vary depending on the individual

A relatively new study offers hope towards learning how certain individuals behave during an episode of psychosis. The study, which appeared in the June 18th issue of The Journal of Neuroscience, discussed the brain activity of healthy individuals compared with participants who ingested the drug “ketamine.” The club drug, and old anesthesia drug, ketamine, is known to induce symptoms of psychosis that mimic psychosis episodes and schizophrenia. The findings in this “ketamine study” help us explain why the symptoms of schizophrenia are completely unique depending on the individual. The results will also help make treatments of psychosis and schizophrenia more personal and uniquely formatted to fit the specific individual needs.

In psychosis, researchers often wonder why one individual may suffer from only odd perceptions, while others are haunted by paranoid-type beliefs that they are being hunted down by the C.I.A., and in other cases, there appears to be only severe disorganization of thoughts. Because of the wide-variety of symptoms, Paul Fletcher, a licensed M.D. at Cambridge University decided to study it.

Paul Fletcher and researchers hypothesized that different symptoms have specific biological links: each of which may disrupt normal cognition and brain function. The researchers were drawn to the fact that individual differences in normal brain activity could determine which cognitive processes are most at risk of being affected by psychosis, schizophrenia, or a drug-induced state.

Schizophrenia is a disease with symptoms that include what are referred to as negative symptoms and positive symptoms. Negative symptoms include: the loss of normal behaviors, reductions in speech, and social withdrawal. Positive symptoms include: hallucinations (auditory, visual), delusions, and disordered thought. Because everyone is unique, each person suffering from the devastating disease of schizophrenia or psychosis could have significantly different symptoms than another person with the disease.

Ketamine, also called “Special K,” is an often-abused analgesic that is able to induce both positive and negative symptoms in individuals. Like psychosis, the side-effects of ketamine vary from individual to individual and are unpredictable. Ketamine is a drug that works by blocking certain receptors in the brain that regulate the neurotransmitter glutamate - also implicated in schizophrenia.

How the study worked

Using MRI imaging, researchers made profiles of individuals either exposed to ketamine or a placebo while the participants did a wide-variety of cognitive tests. The researchers proceeded to evaluate the behaviors of the participants by using medically accepted psychiatric scales. Exactly one month after the evaluation, participants returned to repeat the testing in the opposite condition. Basically, each participant had an M.R.I. taken and was observed after exposure to both ketamine and the placebo. (To clear up any misunderstanding: Each person that had ketamine the first time had the placebo the second time… Each person that had the placebo the first time had ketamine the second time. M.R.I.’s were taken of every participant - both rounds of the study)…

The results of the study: brain activity linked to symptoms

The team of researchers discovered that increased brain activity during some tests with the placebo condition predicted the behaviors when in the psychosis-like ketamine condition. What the researchers found was very interesting! Participants who displayed more frontal and temporal brain activity while “imagining the sounds of voices” in the placebo condition, were very likely to experience strange perceptions during the ketamine condition.

The others, who showed increased activity in the frontal and temporal sections of the brain while trying to complete simple sentences, were much more likely to have disordered thinking while exposed to the ketamine. The brain’s frontal lobe is involved in executive functions such as: planning, making decisions, advanced thinking, and analyzing our environment, while the brain’s temporal lobe is primarily involved in memory, hearing, and speech.

In contrast experiencing positive symptoms, participants who displayed an increased frontal lobe response to a test involving attention while taking a placebo, were increasingly vulnerable to experiencing negative symptoms while observed under the drug ketamine. Also, participants that displayed increased response in a combination of the frontal lobe, thalamus region, and caudate region - (linked brain circuitry that allow us to carry out motor and executive functions — an area often impaired in psychosis and schizophrenia–) - had a tendency to display negative symptoms while under the effects of ketamine.

Groundbreaking research? Maybe not, but it’s a step in the right direction!

This research is a huge step towards heightening our understanding of the mysterious diseases of schizophrenia and psychosis (2 fairly interchangeable terms, with slightly different diagnoses). Now, at least researchers have some form of biological link towards determining and demystifying the unique set of symptoms that are experienced. The researchers also noted the fact that the participants that were under exposure to ketamine were not at risk towards developing any sort of mental disorder. The participants also provided us with further understanding of how certain drugs and certain diseases can induce different states of consciousness in different people.

This study provides us with insight that may allow us to successfully predict psychotic symptoms induced by drugs and disease. A study author, Fletcher said, “This perhaps raises the prospect of early intervention strategies targeted toward schizophrenia patients’ individual patterns of symptom vulnerability.” I completely agree here, this study appears to be slightly groundbreaking, although I feel that researchers are only at the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot of work that still needs to be done in the area of the largely misunderstood psychosis / schizophrenia, but scientists are giving those that suffer a boosted morale and a sense of hope.

Note: The research was supported by the Medical Research Council, The Wellcome Trust, and the Bernard Wolfe Health Neuroscience Fund.

Popularity: 2% [?]

2 Comments »

Hearing voices: not as uncommon as you may think

Contrary to popular belief, not only schizophrenics experience auditory hallucinations a.K.a. hear voices. Many people who are not even mentally ill often report hearing claps, whistles, buzzing voices, or even music in their head. Around 70 % of schizophrenics hear voices that interrupt their thought patterns on a consistent basis and 15% of people with mood disorders experience auditory hallucinations. However, hearing noises or voices isn’t necessarily a sign of mental illness.

According to Scientific American Mind magazine, hearing auditory hallucinations may not be as uncommon as the public thinks. In 1983 a study showed that 70% of a 375 college-student survey admitted to hearing voices at leas once in their lives. Many students thought that they heard dead relatives, divine beings, and even their own thoughts in vocal form. Auditory hallucinations during waking or directly before sleep were recorded by 40% of the study participants.

A 1991 National Institute of Mental Health study reported 5% of 15,000 Americans who had experienced auditory hallucinations, heard them for a complete year. Only 1/3 of the 5% that had experienced the hallucinations met the criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis. Thomas Bock, a psychotherapist and director of the outpatient psychosis service at the University Medical Center of Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany, at least 3% to 5% of the entire population in western Europe and the United States hear voices. In comparison to those findings, the disease schizophrenia only affects every 1 in 100 people.

How do these hallucinations happen?

Psychotherapist Thomas Bock explains that they arise from “too much internal stimulation” or “too little external stimulation.” Bock thinks that auditory hallucinations maybe a cause of people holding too much thought and emotion on the inside. Many people that hear voices have suffered a degree of trauma as a child or adult such as: rape, abuse, isolation, or a severe accident.

The unresolved conflicts resulting from traumas trigger signals which Bock thinks signifies that they need to listen more to their inner voice. Though there are many speculations as to what causes one to hear voices, some researchers agree that the hallucinations are due to a failure in a feedback circuit within the brain.

This feedback circuit normally tells you when “you” are talking or thinking — not someone else. The hypothesis that “self-talk” or “internal dialogue” gets misaligned with normal internal feedback applies to schizophrenics as well.

How can you tell if a person is hearing voices or has schizophrenia?

Well, researchers also studied and compared those who had no psychiatric symptoms to those already diagnosed with schizophrenia. Participants in the study listened to distorted voices of themselves — they were told to press a button if they thought they were listening to themselves or another person.

People already diagnosed with schizophrenia had much greater difficulty identifying their own voices. Also, non-schizophrenics did not report negative commentary in their hallucinations — schizophrenics heard negative and degrading voices. Both groups of people reported commentary on the vocalization of their thoughts, yet non-mentally ill participants heard encouraging statements like: “You can do it” or “it really wasn’t your fault.” Non-mentally ill patients also felt more in control of their voices, while schizophrenics reported little or no control.

What brain-imaging has shown

Brain-imaging studies have also shown the physiological aspects that happen in verbal hallucinations. During schizophrenic hallucinations, a huge increase of brain activity was shown in Broca’s area, an area involved in producing speech, not hearing it. They also found large amounts of activity in the brain’s primary auditory cortex — an area that normally processes sounds from the outside environment. Schizophrenics brain’s responded to their auditory hallucinations the same way as a regular brain responds to chatting with others.

Several causes of auditory hallucinations:

• Mental illness — People with various forms of mental illness can hear voices. It is most common to hear voices in schizophrenia, but in bipolar disorder and severe forms of depression, some people hear voices.

• Social isolation — A common trait of people who experience auditory hallucinations is social isolation. Social isolation causes the brain to receive too little simulation from the outside world. Withdrawn social activity can fuel hallucinations for non-schizophrenics, which in-turn will fuel social rejection.

• Poor stimulation for extended periods — Several hikers and sailors that have survived poor stimulation for long periods of time have reported auditory hallucinations.

• Sensory deprivation victims — Some victims of sensory deprivation victims often report hearing voices. Sleep deprivation when taken to extremes, can commonly cause auditory hallucinations.

• People with hearing loss — Musical hallucinations in people who have forms of hearing loss are actually quite common. Scientists think that the brain records auditory information that it has stored over one’s lifetime. When the external output (hearing) is eliminated, the deposited signals can live on in the form of hearing music — when it’s not playing…

• Spiritual phenomena — Many very spiritual or religious people claim to have heard voices in meditations, rituals, or during enlightening experiences. Very spiritual people claim to have been talking with others in another dimension, talking to “spirit guides,” deceased relatives, or another “higher being.”

How researchers are trying to quiet the voices

Currently, for those who do suffer from hearing voices, anti-psychotic medications work best for eliminating symptoms. Trans-magnetic-stimulation (TMS) has also been used by scientists as a method of decreasing the amount of brain activity in specific regions by using magnetic fields. The targeted areas of TMS have been those involved in speech-processing.

In 2005, researchers were able to suppress acoustic hallucinations in 50 patients for a total time period of 3 + months! Studies have also shown that the sooner one talks to someone about hearing the voices, the sooner the voices disappear. They have also shown that how a person views their voices is almost always a direct reflection of what the person actually hears.

Researchers and therapists are also helping victims learn how to “reframe the voices” and become more conscious of their illness. Therapists help to make sufferers masters of their own mind — by providing victims with valuable coping techniques. One interesting coping technique that has been used on several patients is that of allowing voices to “come out for conversation” during a set period of time.

By allowing them to come out for a set period, they tend not to usually bother the victims for the rest of the day. Another interesting phenomenon that scientists have found is that the vocal hallucinations that a victim experiences are usually a mirror reflection of their social life with real people.

It’s not always necessary to eliminate hearing voices from your life. Researchers think that whether or not a person should attempt to eliminate voices should result from whether the voices are positive or negative. When voices get negative, swear at the victim, talk trash, or degrade the person hearing them, it is definitely recommended to get help.

On the other hand, if a person hears positive voices, is socially active, and is not isolated, chances are good that the person can comfortably lead a fulfilling life. However, friends and family should still not rule out mental illness if one does hear “positive voices.” Some people manage to convince themselves that “negative voices” actually are well-meaning.

What should you learn from this article?

You should realize that hearing voices is actually fairly common nowadays. If you are hearing voices, don’t be afraid to share them with others — it may quiet them a little bit. The type, or mood of the voice, can usually distinguish a schizophrenic from a non-schizophrenic. For a nice video clip on what it feels like to experience schizophrenia: check this out — it’s a “virtual simulation.”

————————————————————————————————————————–

Article sources: Scientific American Mind December 2006 / January 2007 Issue, Article: Hearing Voices by Bettina Thraenhardt — a psychologist and science journalist.

Popularity: 10% [?]

4 Comments »