Inside the Mind of a Schizophrenic Through Virtual Reality 93
blottsie writes Viscira produces videos and technology simulations for the healthcare industry, and the project I tested called "Mindscape" was created for a pharmaceutical company that wanted to give potential clients insight into what some schizophrenic patients might feel like in a real-life scenario. Unlike audio tests or videos that show you a first-person perspective of schizophrenic experiences, Viscira's demonstration uses the Oculus Rift headset and is entirely immersive. You can look around at each individual's face, and up and down the hallway. Walk through the elevator, and hear voices that appear to be coming from both strangers and your own head.
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Successful troll is successful.
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Your post is soooo meta. Even if the AC reply was really the troll himself (possibly quite likely, it's been a long, long time since I saw someone here fall for it), your post would have made itself be true.
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I find myself wishing that you are soon diagnosed with some horrible disease for which there is no cure.
Birth.
Done.
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Impossible (Score:3, Informative)
No matter how hard you try, you cannot "get into the mind" of a schizophrenic. Even with the Oculus Rift.
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True, but short of inducing schizophrenia and then being able to cure it instantly, this might be close enough.
Re:Impossible - This has been done (Score:2, Interesting)
Timothy Leary and other researchers used LSD when it was still legal, to induce temporary psychosis in themselves and other clinicians.
They did so to better understand the mindscape of psychotic patients. A schizophrenic is not psychotic all the time, but the brain's full tilt mode is reportedly really close to what can be achieved by consumption of LSD. Recreational consumers of LSD call this state a bad trip.
Sadly, since LSD is one of the "bad" drugs that needs to have "war" waged against it, clinical exp
Re:Impossible - This has been done (Score:5, Insightful)
Those psychomimetic effects aren't necessarily interpreted as a "bad trip".
Many people with schizophrenia don't consider it a "bad trip" either. By the time they are diagnosed, many of them have already lost their friends, alienated their families, have no job, and little hope of having a meaningful life. For them, reality is shit. But inside their their own mind, they are the king of the world. So why should they go through the effort of conscientiously taking medication that converts them from a king to a lonely homeless loser? This is something that makes treating schizophrenia difficult: treatment makes things get worse, sometimes much worse, before things get better. It is explained in the book The Seduction of Madness [amazon.com].
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True except the only part you got wrong is that the drugs don't work. The drugs in a lot of cases actually make you worse, they crush your talents and your skill and leave you emotionally dead and broken. They can literally make the illness worse and cause damaging effects that are pretty much permanent. Psychiatrists don't really understand schizophrenia and they don't really understand the brain. They still think you can fix a neural network with chemicals alone... (or - ECT like trying to start a car, at
Re:Impossible (Score:5, Informative)
True, but short of inducing schizophrenia and then being able to cure it instantly, this might be close enough.
Indeed. Just because the simulation is imperfect, that doesn't make it worthless. Schizophrenia affects more than two million Americans. It is the most common permanently debilitating mental disorder. The cost in treatment, foregone income, etc. is over $100B annually in America. It is a leading contributor to homelessness, criminality, and other social disorders. But is also deeply misunderstood. Many people confuse it with split personality disorder, which is unrelated and rare.
So why does the average person need to understand schizophrenia? Because they can vote. Many of our policies toward homelessness and crime, are politically popular but totally misguided. Homeless is not caused by "lack of houses", and homeless shelters don't work well with disruptive people that shout back at the voices in their head. Our prisons are filled with people being "punished" who see no connection between their actions and the consequences.
I had a cousin which schizophrenia. He told me that the best way to understand it was to think about waking from a vivid dream. For about 10 seconds, you are confused about what was the dream and what is reality. Then your mind clears, and you realize that the dream made no sense whatsoever, and it seems crazy that your mind ever considered it to be real. Except if you have schizophrenia, your mind doesn't clear, and the crazy dreams don't go away when you wake up. My cousin committed suicide when he was 29.
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Just because the simulation is imperfect, that doesn't make it worthless. Schizophrenia affects more than two million Americans. It is the most common permanently debilitating mental disorder.
But putting out a 'schizophrenia simulator' that emphasizes perceptual hallucinations completely glosses over that mental disorders alter the processing of thoughts. There's no way to communicate the subjective experience of reality, and emphasizing the visual and auditory aspects risks turning a serious disorder into a fun-house ride. It suggests that you can just learn which experiences are real and filter out that which is not.
Another example: it's quite common for people with stroke to draw clocks wit
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I disagree with your assumption that schizophrenia is the leading cause of homelessness, social disorders, etc.
Go volunteer for an overnight shift at a homeless shelter. It will change your viewpoint.
I think capitalism prevents these people from affording or obtaining homes
Sure. Right. Whatever. That must be why only capitalist countries have homelessness.
Anyone targeted by the government, CIA, etc, normally ends up persecuted ...
You need help.
Re:Impossible (Score:4, Insightful)
In the sense that a virtual reality that you can enter and exit any time you like is not going to be the same, I agree. Indeed, having to actually live with the experience, as opposed to temporarily subjecting yourself to it is the real issue.
That said, anything that allows non-schizophrenic people to experience the same sort of inputs will be useful towards understanding.
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Sadly I don't think this will get us anywhere near to the reality of schizophrenia. The problem is that schizophrenia is inside a persons mind not outside it. Also it is not essentially a hallucination or delusion although those are very common side effects. Schizophrenia is a malfunction in the core of consciousness that seeds a separate 'voice' that then feeds the person information and lies and then isolates them from external society and people.
At its core schizophrenia is an illness of sleep - its prim
Re:Impossible (Score:5, Interesting)
No matter how hard you try, you cannot "get into the mind" of anyone*.
*ftfy. - I think it is what they call the qualia problem.
However it still might be useful in a similar sense as lenses that hamper your eyesight to resemble a cataract. It gives the researcher an idea how senses of such an individual are altering his/her perception of the world.
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No matter how hard you try, you cannot "get into the mind" of anyone*.
*ftfy. - I think it is what they call the qualia problem.
However it still might be useful in a similar sense as lenses that hamper your eyesight to resemble a cataract. It gives the researcher an idea how senses of such an individual are altering his/her perception of the world.
The illusion would be more complete if they piped the 'voices in your head' through a bone anchored hearing system. Then the voices would actually be in your head. Probably not a lot of people would sign up for the implant procedure just for that though. [oticonmedical.com]
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No matter how hard you try, you cannot "get into the mind" of anyone*.
*ftfy. - I think it is what they call the qualia problem.
However it still might be useful in a similar sense as lenses that hamper your eyesight to resemble a cataract. It gives the researcher an idea how senses of such an individual are altering his/her perception of the world.
The illusion would be more complete if they piped the 'voices in your head' through a bone anchored hearing system. Then the voices would actually be in your head. Probably not a lot of people would sign up for the implant procedure just for that though. [oticonmedical.com]
I agree! While still not perfect this would at least be better.
I took some medication for migraines about a year ago and they caused me to have a "minor" psychotic break.
It was the scariest damn thing that has ever happened to me in my life!
To be coding and have voices yelling at you about your code, yet the voices are in your head.
Or have your code be part of some elaborate story, and each class you write goes towards helping the Voodoo Witch in your head put together a spell.
You don't want to help her, bu
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But we might be able to *give* someone schizophrenia by immersing them in this type of VR experience. How cool would that be?
Re:Impossible (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think that one point people are missing is that the wetware is different, and that usually this has been the case for an extended period of time. I don't think that using the Ocular Rift is going to be capable of helping people understand The schizophrenic programmer who built an os to talk to god [slashdot.org]. Same as there's no way to simulate PTSD or Major Depressive Disorder, OCD, Hypervigilance, or even panic attacks that are sparked by relatively innocuous events.
If you want to get a realistic taste of what it'
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After reading "Queen of Angels" by Greg Bear, I don't even see why anyone would want to attempt to do this....
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most schizophrenics got that way from doing meth.
Then how come schizophrenia existed long before meth?
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Triggers are things that can cause schizophrenia to develop in people who are at risk. These include:
Stress
The main psychological triggers of schizophrenia are stressful life events, such as a bereavement, losing your job or home, a divorce or the end of a relationship, or physical, sexual, emotional or racial abuse. These kinds of experiences, though stressful, do not cause schizophrenia, but can trigger its development in someone already vulnerable to it.
Drug abuse
Drugs do not directly cause schizophrenia, but studies have shown drug misuse increases the risk of developing schizophrenia or a similar illness.
Certain drugs, particularly cannabis, cocaine, LSD or amphetamines, may trigger symptoms of schizophrenia in people who are susceptible. Using amphetamines or cocaine can lead to psychosis and can cause a relapse in people recovering from an earlier episode.
Three major studies have shown teenagers under 15 who use cannabis regularly, especially ‘skunk’ and other more potent forms of the drug, are up to four times more likely to develop schizophrenia by the age of 26.
Bereavement, losing your job or home, a divorce or the end of a relationship, or physical, sexual, emotional or racial abuse have all been around long before meth, and so has schizophrenia.
I know the voices aren't real (Score:2)
Obligatory [googleusercontent.com].
What if... (Score:3, Funny)
Much like a dog whistle, which humans cannot hear. What if some people were 'sensitive' to other energies - sounds, lights, etc. that were outside the normal realm of human perception?
What if schizophrenic people weren't "hallucinating", so to speak, but were able to actually "perceive" these energies or beings?
Ahh, what then?
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That sounds like... SCHIZO TALK! *Blam!* *Blam!*
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Re:What if... (Score:4, Interesting)
What if schizophrenic people weren't "hallucinating", so to speak, but were able to actually "perceive" these energies or beings?
More often than not, the "messages" are coming from God/Jesus or Satan, according to the patient. Mind you, my sample population is almost completely Judeo-Christian in orientation. It should be completely unsurprising that such perceptions are often ascribed to powerful supernatural entities from the patient's own psyche. If you want to argue that it's really Jesus calling, you're going to have to explain why He never calls the Muslim or Hindu schizophrenics.
Mind you, I'm not trying to discount the possibility of the paranormal in general, but when it comes to the sensory experiences of those who suffer from certain disorders, this is well plowed ground. Peddle it someplace else.
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I'm very close to a schizophrenic, and the "voices" are always int he form of either false memories or "code" in web pages or the crawling text on the news. They are not "perceiving" anything true. It is a mental disease.
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What's really interesting to me is that the messages change in tone and intent depending on where the person lives.
In foreign (non-U.S.) cultures, the voices are often friendly, playful and may be perceived as coming from a relative:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/... [stanford.edu]
Re:What if... (Score:5, Insightful)
Come up with a way you think you could test this and publish it somewhere. What measurable thing would exist in that case but not if it were untrue?
If schizophrenic people just had stronger or "extra" perceptions, that hypothesis could be tested:
1. If several were in the same place, they should all perceive the same extra sensory occurrences at the same time.
2. The extra information would likely be useful, so schizophrenic people would be more successful.
3. There is no reason that the extra information should distort their interpretation of "normal" reality in harmful ways, just add to it.
None of these are true.
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If you put 100 non-schizophrenics in a room they won't all agree on what they perceive.
They will not agree on every detail, but most of them will mostly agree on what they see and hear. For schizophrenics, there is no evidence that their "extra" perceptions are correlated in any way. Hence, there is no reason to believe they are caused by events outside their own minds.
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You are making the assumption they are all tuned into the same frequencies.
Imagine you get 100 people into a room and their teeth pick up radio signals, some AM, some FM. What one person hears will be different from the next one.
Yes it's a mental disease, but like any other, there are reasons pro's/con's why it happens and how.
- Yo Grark
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So how can someone without the condition measure it? The dog whistle, we know it is high frequency, so we can measure, and generate frequencies higher than normal perception. But we cannot seem to measure such an instance, nor we are unable to broadcast such message into a persons head (say someone who is already schizophrenic, and be able to send him other messages).
Right now this idea is outside of what we can observe, the easier path is to state that it is an anomaly in the brain. In science the easi
Predictive value (Score:2)
Right now this idea is outside of what we can observe, the easier path is to state that it is an anomaly in the brain. In science the easiest solution that fits the model, is the one taken to be the one to use.
You can ask whether the information has predictive value.
The brain is an elaborate goal-setting mechanism coupled to a prediction engine. If the schizophrenic can use his extra information in some way that allows them to predict future actions or consequences, then we can say that the extra information is likely to be real.
We do this all the time; for example, predicting that we will get run over if we step off the curb, based on information from our visible inputs about cars in the street.
It's very easy to
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Re: Theres already a version for linux! (Score:2)
I thought that was Pulseaudio that gave me the streaming voices that tell me to see systemd trolls everywhere.
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"Overrated"? This is genius!
why do schizophrenic surfers have all the fun? (Score:1)
No matter where you go... (Score:1)
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Or perhaps that happens to a lot of people but since it isn't distressing, they just assume that's how it is for everyone or they count themselves lucky.
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Would you also argue that there is no such thing as epilepsy in people who have no discernible physical abnormalities in their brains?
What would your "simple critical thinking skills" tell you if you observed someone having an epileptic seizure?
One show I saw displayed it in an interesting way (Score:3)
About a decade ago, a one-shot FX series called Dirt came out. It was about the celebrity tabloid journalism industry, I thought it was pretty interesting even though I'm not into that kind of stuff. One of the more interesting parts of it was that there was a schizophrenic photographer, and they did a couple segments from his perspective during periods when he was on and off his meds. I have no idea if their portrayal is how it acutally is, but I thought it matched what we've been described to as the symptoms. When the show was through his perspective, it was hard to tell what was real and what wasn't real sometimes.
Inside the Mind of a Schizophrenic (Score:2)