People Born Blind Are Mysteriously Protected From Schizophrenia (vice.com) 87
Motherboard reports on the possible explanations for why people born blind are protected from schizophrenia: Over the past 60-some years, scientists around the world have been writing about this mystery. They've analyzed past studies, combed the wards of psychiatric hospitals, and looked through agencies that treat blind people, trying to find a case. As time goes on, larger data sets have emerged: In 2018, a study led by a researcher named Vera Morgan at the University of Western Australia looked at nearly half a million children born between 1980 and 2001 and strengthened this negative association. Pollak, a psychiatrist and researcher at King's College London, remembered checking in the mental health facility where he works after learning about it; he too was unable to find a single patient with congenital blindness who had schizophrenia. These findings suggest that something about congenital blindness may protect a person from schizophrenia. This is especially surprising, since congenital blindness often results from infections, brain trauma, or genetic mutation -- all factors that are independently associated with greater risk of psychotic disorders.
More strangely, vision loss at other periods of life is associated with higher risks of schizophrenia and psychotic symptoms. Even in healthy people, blocking vision for just a few days can bring about hallucinations. And the connections between vision abnormalities and schizophrenia have become more deeply established in recent years -- visual abnormalities are being found before a person has any psychotic symptoms, sometimes predicting who will develop schizophrenia. But the whispered-about fact persists: Being born blind, and perhaps specific types of congenital blindness, shield from the very disorders vision loss can encourage later in life. A myriad of theories exist as to why -- from the blind brain's neuroplasticity to how vision plays an important role in building our model of the world (and what happens when that process goes wrong). Select researchers believe that the ties between vision and psychotic symptoms indicate there's something new to learn here. Could it be that within this narrowly-defined phenomenon there are clues for what causes schizophrenia, how to predict who will develop it, and potentially how to treat it?
More strangely, vision loss at other periods of life is associated with higher risks of schizophrenia and psychotic symptoms. Even in healthy people, blocking vision for just a few days can bring about hallucinations. And the connections between vision abnormalities and schizophrenia have become more deeply established in recent years -- visual abnormalities are being found before a person has any psychotic symptoms, sometimes predicting who will develop schizophrenia. But the whispered-about fact persists: Being born blind, and perhaps specific types of congenital blindness, shield from the very disorders vision loss can encourage later in life. A myriad of theories exist as to why -- from the blind brain's neuroplasticity to how vision plays an important role in building our model of the world (and what happens when that process goes wrong). Select researchers believe that the ties between vision and psychotic symptoms indicate there's something new to learn here. Could it be that within this narrowly-defined phenomenon there are clues for what causes schizophrenia, how to predict who will develop it, and potentially how to treat it?
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Whose aliens? (Score:3)
Btw: What do you write, when you want to talk about something that belongs to Steven King's clown? :D
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Visual Cortex, hallucinations (Score:5, Informative)
I'm betting there's something with how the brain separates out reality from fantasy happens somewhere in the visual cortex. People with schizophrenia have hallucinations that seem like reality to them. They can be conversing with an imaginary person that's not there, but it's there to them.
A slashdot way of putting it, schizophrenia is like augmented reality that won't turn off.
Re:Visual Cortex, hallucinations (Score:4, Informative)
Schizophrenia, where dreams bleed into reality. So what happens to your dream engine when you are conscious, can you tap into during meditation, near sleep states, create images on purpose and even sounds. I found images interesting and sound disturbing and stopped there. Does schizophrenia get worse, the more a person starts to pay attention to it, rather than ignoring it, they teach themselves to focus on those thoughts and make the worse and worse over time, instead of ignoring them and considering them an idle brain glitch, a stray unimportant thought, an idle moment of fantasy, instead by focusing in on it, they make it a reality within their mind. The more they dwell on it, the worse they make it.
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instead by focusing in on it, they make it a reality within their mind.
Some psychiatrists call this "the seduction of madness".
For most schizophrenics, reality is shit. Many are homeless and have alienated their families and lost their friends. They often suffer from alcoholism and addiction, are abused by the police and justice system, and have layer after layer of problems. Anti-psychotic medication makes them lethargic and fogs their minds.
But if they drop off their meds and fall back into the world of delusions, those problems go away and they are the king of the world.
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I'm betting there's something with how the brain separates out reality from fantasy happens somewhere in the visual cortex.
Not likely; some people with congenital blindness have a fully functional visual cortex, and these people tend to be able to echolocate pretty well, with the prevailing understanding being that their visual cortex instead ends up processing what they hear.
People with schizophrenia have hallucinations that seem like reality to them.
Well that would explain Bernie Bros...
Deaf not Blind? (Score:4, Interesting)
Schizophrenics normally just hear voices. Only a few really bad ones also have hallucinations. So one might expect a correlation with deafness?
And they really do hear them, which is why they often play loud music to drown them out. Self talk is a bit like that too -- it seems that we almost need to produce imaginary sounds in order to keep our brain coordinated. The brain looks like a rough piece of software that has just been hacked together over a long period of time with no overall plan...
I wonder how the deaf think? Do they have self talk?
Re:Deaf not Blind? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how the deaf think? Do they have self talk?
From what I've read, they self talk in sign language. Which boggles my mind.
But then again, our "voice" self talk isn't really voice. Or even sound.
Something I wonder.. When I'm alone, I talk to myself out loud. Does a deaf person sign to themselves?
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The crazy thing to me is: a big chunk of the population has no inner monologue at all. No voice in your head saying "aw fuck, here we go again" when that idiot stands up I'm a meeting. Just formless... what?
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Washoe the Chimp signed to herself (Score:3)
Back in the 1970s when such things were possible, a Chimp named Washoe was taught American Sign Langauage. (The trick was to do it in somone's home/ranch, rather than a sterile Skinner box in a lab.) Learnt several hundred signs, made two and three word sentences, and made up new idioms like "arm ring" for "bracelet".
When going somewhere she was not supposed to go, Washoe was observed to sign to herself "quick, quiet".
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Overall given the huge flood of information that is received visually compared to all other senses it's not entirely surprising that a lack of vision could be linked to this result. Maybe schizophrenia is just an overload in the brain where the cortex can't cope with the load thrown at it?
If that's the case it's of course possible that it's an indirect link and that some blind people actually have the latent potential for schizophrenia but they never reach that level of input load that triggers it. And it's
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Most the the brain doesn't separate. (Score:2)
Try imagining eating a sour lemon vividly. Your mouth *will* water. :)
Cause most of your brain doesn't care. Only the parts for higher thinking care.
Also, we have auditory halluonations etc too. So maybe it's just that the visual cortex is much more powerful. We could test if e.g. blind dogs can get schizophrenia due to their much better sense of smell, and it's hence not that blind people can't get it, but just that the other senses can't really get intense enough.
Or maybe it's because the eyes are much cl
Re: Visual Cortex, hallucinations (Score:2)
If people have no vision a major brain region is unused. This gives the brain more freedom with its interconnections, allowing to avoid collisions or mixing of the interconnected regions. Wasn't there a relation between a vortex in the hair on the back of t
Re:Visual Cortex, hallucinations (Score:4, Insightful)
Of the half million in the study, 0.4% incidence of the disease but none in the congenital blind. But there was only 66 congenital blind in the study. The expected number of the blind schizo's if they were the same as the population at large would have been 1. So not sure how strong that study is.
The idea of not having a working (either in a real sense, ie that part of the brain isn't active, or in a sense that it isn't receiving inputs) visual cortex leading you to not get diagnosed as schizo kind of makes sense as possibly a protection. But also it's probably one of the key checks for getting diagnosed in the first place. There probably aren't many amputees getting diagnosed with broken legs either.
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What I want to know is:
What percentage of people in North America (western medicine, toxic dumping laws etc) are born blind? - A "quick" search gives me tons and tons of hits about the elderly.
A no-effort check says it's 1.2% for Schizophrenia
What does a properly proportional venn diagram look like? Are we under-diagnosing due to a key methodology requiring sight
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Schizophrenia also has symptoms like hearing voices. At first glance one would think a blind person would have more issues with separating whether a sound is really occurring or not. Of course they did discover that, at least for some, the voices they were hearing came from really quiet talking they were doing to themselves. They put a sensitive microphone up to their necks to verify.
Of course, my bet is that the genetic mutations that cause blindness also affect the genetic mutations that predispose a pers
Appendix? (Score:2)
Given the discussion about how visual cortex defects can predict schizophrenia, it sounds to me like it's like being born without an appendix (not saying whether that's possible, but just suppose): you can't get appendicitis. Born without sight, the visual cortex doesn't develop, so it can't get "sick" and cause schizophrenia.
Re:Appendix? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, there are plenty of people born blind who have a fully functional visual cortex, and they do make use of it:
https://www.sciencemag.org/new... [sciencemag.org]
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Yes, it does. (Score:2)
You're under a false assumption that it's fully genetically pre-defined, as explained in my comment below.
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None? (Score:2)
Dynamic reconfiguration is the whole point of the brain.
Just because we all usually develop the same way and our brain regions specialize the same way, doesn't mean it's fixed. That is a common misconception.
We know many cases where other parts of the brain took over a function, after the original one was injured or removed.
Re: None? (Score:1)
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No, there are plenty of people born blind who have a fully functional visual cortex, and they do make use of it:
https://www.sciencemag.org/new... [sciencemag.org]
Perhaps somehow this is why they seem to be invulnerable to schizophrenia. Perhaps the mis-operation of the visual cortex is in some way part of the mechanism behind schizophrenia; perhaps then the repurposing of the visual cortex to other functions due to blindness causes it to avoid that particular mis-operation. (It could even mean that some other disorder could become more common among those born blind.)
Of course, the main problem with my speculation--apart from coming at it from a philosophical angle r
Birth and first sight (Score:2, Funny)
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I generally disagree with everything you say, but that's funny as hell.
Re: Birth and first sight (Score:1)
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Real leftist do have a sense of humor, but they don't like it when it unfairly targets a group of people, or the humor is used to keep a particular group of people down.
Re: Birth and first sight (Score:1)
Re: Birth and first sight (Score:1)
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Your eyes reveal the lies that people tell you.
I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
Schizophrenia self help group (Score:2)
"Ok, folks, let's blind-fold for a week"
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I can't, one of my personalities is afraid of the dark.
I know that you are just making a joke, but schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder are two completely different things.
Schizophrenia is way more common, by a factor of a hundred.
About 1% of Americans, or about 3 million people, suffer from schizophrenia. The cost to America's economy is $100B annually. The cost could be lower if we used medicine more and jails less to treat mental health problems. The prisons and jails are expensive and aren't very effective.
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But we don't want to spend money helping people. That is socialism. But locking them up and taking them out of society, that is justice.
Who cares that it is more expensive to lock people up vs helping them.
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You mean: (Score:2)
"Believe and let Jesus guide us!" :D
I bet that's how churches started.
"You feel the presence of a powerful being too? Let's start a self-help group!"
Life is tradeoffs (Score:1)
"Doctor, help, I have schizophrenia!"
* poke *
"I'm blind, I'm blind, why the fuck did you do that?"
Congenital blindness dreaming (Score:3)
I'm sure studies have been done on this, but I wonder what people blind from birth dream? Dreams are a very visual thing, so if you have no memories or experiences visually, I don't suppose you would "see" things in your dreams either. Do they dream of sounds and other sensations then?
A similar thing that boggles my mind is what do people that grew up without language think? When I think, it tends to be verbal in nature. Kind of talking in my mind. If you have no vocabulary, it would have to affect your very thought process, correct? Similar kinda thing.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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There is a tree in front of me, I know it is a tree, I know where it is, I know how big it is, I am aware that it is green, but that's about it.
Dam, the more I hear this the more I wonder if I have Aphantasia. Either way, I know exactly what you are talking about. I've never really dreamt people into my dreams -- could be tied to how bad I am with faces. Cars, houses, computers, etc. thats all there but when people enter the scene they don't exist and are just like metadata. I can wake from a dream and know "I talked to Jane, I had the emotion reaction I expected to have when I see Jane, but Jane was basically a grey blob of non-features."
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I'm pretty sure I'm face blind (I can only recognize people by their voice or some other characteristic). In my dreams, people don't have faces. I don't mean a face is blank, it's just not part of the dream. But I still know who the person is and interact with them. I'll bet you know exactly what I mean.
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Same here. You guys are describing exactly how dreams are to me as well. You may be interested in my post further up contrasting how my artist wife sees dreams.
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I do 3D design work as a hobby. I can design complex shapes and mechanisms in my head, all without visualization. I also don't think in words or numbers. But my brain can formulate a set of instructions to create the item without those abilities. Really weird.
According to the book: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Our imagination is what prevents us from drawing things accurately and realistically.
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Ancedotes:
My wife is a painter of portraits and murals. When she describes her dreams she includes how someone's face looked, or the colors. "It was Bob, but his jaw was sharper and his hair gray." She can also describe someone's face in detail if that person is not present. By contrast when I describe my dreams, people are icons. I know that person is Bob because they are the concept of Bob but I do not see their face. Bob might be "older" in concept but he has no jaw and no hair color unless they ar
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That's interesting. I'd heard many people with aphantasia still did dream visually, and that the two processes weren't the same. I'm not fully aphantasic, but maybe 90% (vague images, don't last long) but my dreams are extremely visually clear.
Drifting off topic a bit, one of the things I've enjoyed about hallucinogens (LSD, mushrooms) is they're one of the few times in my life when I've been able to close my eyes and see things while awake. Even if I don't control them, they look neat and it's not a show I
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Lots of people who grew up just fine with language don't think in verbal terms. That other people hear an "inner voice" is a big surprise to them.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)/ [wikipedia.org]
I always ask bilingual people what language they dream in and think in. Their answer typically depends on when they learned the languages. If they are exposed to multiple languages before the age of 5, they can usually think AND dream in both languages. People that learned a foreign language later in life have to do more translation using a completely different pa
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That is strange. I think and dream in all three languages I can speak fluently although I've learned all of my foreign languages after the age of 10.
I even sometimes dream in French even though I haven't used it in decades and never have been fluent in it in the first place - my totally broken Czech is actually better than my French.
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Sometime I dream in French and my French is really bad.
Other then remembering a few words, I just kinda know what is being said, and my responses are handled.
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When I think, it tends to be verbal in nature. Kind of talking in my mind.
Think of how the pistons and crankshaft move and interact in a four-stroke engine. Verbal or visual?
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The visual system requires experience in order to develop normally. We have good examples of people who were born essentially blind, or suffered damage to their eyes early on, and had sight restored later in life. They do not see normally, and this issue is not merely a question of having blurry vision, but to object and spatial perceptions. To conjure and example, they can (at least in some cases) see fine when tested on the equivalent of an eye chart, but can't tell you whether an orange held at arm's
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I don't necessarily see or hear thing in my dream.
But a feeling of presence that I am in that situation. Being that I a lot more visual experience I would interpret this presence as a visual element. But if I am focusing on an Audio or Tactile experience then I interpret it that way.
A blind person would have audio, tactile perhaps olfactory experience in a dream.
Genetic linkage (Score:2)
That's nothing (Score:2)
People born with schizophrenia are mysteriously protected from congenital blindness.
The blind don't see (Score:1)
Hearing voices (Score:3)
So are blind people also less susceptible to "hearing voices"? And how about deaf people? Is there a similar effect?
Re: Hearing voices (Score:2)
Or is it because if they hear voices, but canâ(TM)t visually verify it was real?
If you are blind, and heard someone say something, would you just accept it was real and move on?
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Congenitally deaf people with schizophrenia actually hallucinate sign language, while those who were hearing and became deaf actually hear voices, even though they cannot hear. I read this in Julian Jaynes' book on the Bicameral Mind, and the point was to indicate that there was an "inner voice" to even people who couldn't hear, although the "inner voice" was tied to language even when there was no spoken language.
I don't think blind people were mentioned in Jaynes' book. What would be interesting to know
Feed them MORE sugar. (Score:2)
Finish him!
*hands out thin mint*
*SPLOSH!*
Re: Only if you falsely don't count religious peop (Score:2)
Yes, it literally is.
"Troll" ... Only in America. (Score:2)
OK, in similar states, like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Israel, the Vatican, the IS, and other "god states", too.
A lesson (Score:2)
One lesson still to be learned, apparently, is that the brain is not in the business of building "models" of the world.
Mirrors? (Score:1)
Computer analogy? (Score:2)
If your web browser isn't kept up to date, you get the various types of malwares that spread via HTTP. If you never installed a browser in the first place, you don't get them.
what has been seen cannot be unseen (Score:1)
mystery? (Score:1)