China.. Discovering the mechanisms of creating “voices in the brain” in people with schizophrenia

Scientists published an article in this regard in the scientific journal PLoS Biology.

It stated: “Suppressing the work of these areas of the brain or restoring their normal functioning will rid patients of the ‘voices’ in the brain.” Patients with schizophrenia often hear voices without real auditory or verbal stimuli. “Our research showed that these patients lose the ability to distinguish between reality and imagination as a result of a defect in certain chains of nerve cells that connect the motor and vocal systems of the brain.”

A team of Chinese neurophysiologists led by Zhang Chen, a professor at Jiaotong University in Shanghai, China, reached this conclusion after studying the brain function of twenty people with schizophrenia, half of whom complained of the presence of “voices in their heads.” While other patients did not have such a problem. In these experiments, scientists asked volunteers to read a verbal syllable that was displayed on the screen after a quick audio signal, and at this time they tracked their brain activity using an electroencephalogram.

Measurements conducted by neuroscientists showed differences in the functioning of two groups of neuronal circuits that connect the motor and sensory areas of the brain and play an important role in a person’s ability to distinguish actions and events in the environment from thoughts, expectations and intentions. For this reason, the brain constantly filters sensory information, compares it with intentions and expectations, and then removes unnecessary data that is not related to the perception of the real world around us.

In some cases these expectations do not correspond to reality, and as a result the person begins to experience strange hallucinations. A clear example of this is that people often stumble and feel unusual sensations when they climb a fixed escalator. Something similar happens constantly in the brains of some people with schizophrenia.

The article concluded that the data collected using an electroencephalogram showed that the chain of neurons responsible for comparing data from the motor and sensory systems of the brain was disrupted in these patients, while another chain of neurons responsible for “reproducing” thoughts and intentions appeared to be in the work of an incomplete quantity. Normal noise. This leads to the individual losing the ability to distinguish his thoughts from external stimuli and begins to hear “voices” in his head.

Source: TASS