Brain wrinkles on the brain seem to be linked to hallucinations for people suffering of schizophrenia.
As every day brings with it new scientific discoveries, today the results of a new study have concluded that schizophrenic people with brain wrinkles are prone to schizophrenic hallucinations. The new study was published in the Nature Communications journal.
The Trinity College Dublin, Macquarie University, University of Cambridge and Durham University have put together a team of researchers who have found out that schizophrenics who also suffer from hallucinations have brains with shorter folds. They are referring to a particular fold of the brain named paracingulate sulcus (PCS), which develops before birth.
Dr. John Simons defined schizophrenia as a mass of multiple different conditions within a person’s brain. As a result, it is very difficult to find the connections between mental symptoms and the specifications of certain areas of the brain.
Jane Garrison from the University of Cambridge argued that hallucinations are a complex phenomenon which appears in multiple mental illnesses. It also has various forms and is quite common among people. There are for sure more than one reason for the apparition of hallucinations. This study will prove of real help in determining why some people have the curse or the gift of experiencing things that are not real.
Previously, another study was conducted by Dr. Simons along with researchers from Cambridge. Together, they discovered that the length of PCS was also related to reality monitoring. Reality monitoring represents the ability of a person to distinguish between what is real and what is not.
Dr. Simons examined again the PCS, this time trying to see the relation between its length and the symptoms of schizophrenics, and whether this is the cause for hallucinations. During their study, they did MRI scans for 153 people suffering of schizophrenia. The next step was to compare them to scans taken from mentally healthy people. They also had to compare the scans of schizophrenic people who experienced hallucinations with the ones from schizophrenics who didn’t.
In this way, a link was established between a region of the brain, in this case the PCS and the hallucinations experiences by schizophrenics. However, this does not apply to people who are mentally healthy.
The finding that people with brain wrinkles are prone to schizophrenic hallucinations is certainly a milestone in studies about schizophrenia, as well as studies about the complex hallucinations.
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