cause. The most well studied is schizophrenia and there is some
frightening evidence that there it may have a significant part of the
illness coming from changes in the brain. Wherher these changes are
illness or just a change is a complex debate but for another post.
In an earlier post I made the point that changes in the brain don't mean
illness, otherwise taxi driving would be a mental illness according to
the research.
http://imaginendless.blogspot.com/2010/05/driving-taxi-is-brain-disease.html
At a guess and from experience of schizotypy and schizoaffective
disorder before then I think there are important aspects of the internal
experience that are missed by the psychiatric research. This is based on
my personal experience rather than anything based in stuff I've read.
There is the inside world and the outside world, the world of the mind
and the world of the real world or external reality. As a geenralisation
I'd probably say people who experience psychosis or have alternate
experiences of consciousness tend to be more inside world people.
Automotons, or those who don't experience mental health problems may be
more outside world people.
The terms inside and outside world can cover many experiences. I use it
in this sense to differentiate how people understand the world. This
mainly applies to social reality rather than physical reality but I
haven't full gone through the thought process on this concept yet to see
what it does and doesn't include.
How does a person judge an event in the world and intepret it. There's
the Bayesian theory of the mind. There are other theories too. I
percieve two modes: listening to intuition and this is analogous to
listening to the voices of the hearing voices experience or trusting the
other consciousness and thoughts in my experience. The other is to
interpret reality as a person would, using the tools developed through
learning through society.
A person winks at you. What does it mean? An outside world person may
consider the many possibilities. It could be the wind. It could be a
sign of attraction. It could be a secret sign. It could be a wink at a
joke you don't understand. It could be something else. It takes more
brain effort and uses more of the brain, and in doing so keeps the brain
working like 'normal' people who aren't in touch with their internal
experience. People who listen to their intuition or their unshared
perceptions or voices or whatever may use their higher brain functions
less. This could be a factor in the changes in brain volumes seen in
studies.
Not everyone listens to their other consciousness or voice though some
paradigms of treatment for psychosis tell them they should. A person who
experiences a 'paranoid' experience of consciousness may not be able to
safely listen to their other consciousness. In the classic story of
command hallucinations, the story of Abraham in the Old Testament, the
voice of god tells Abraham to kill his son. The Bible story has a happy
ending but I expect in modern life the story may happen and be retold
differently. A noteworthy result is people who are paranoid tend to be
more intelligent. This may be because of having to use the external
world processings bits of the brain and the internal world processing
ones which are both experienced at the same 'volume' (or intensity).
They're constantly having to choose and do more processing to interpret
reality so their intelligence increases. Constantly having to do this
may mean their brains change differently to how other people's brains
change. Just like with taxi driving this may show in brain volume changes.
It's worth noting that I don't take the psychiatric view that the
exprience is a brain dysfunction but I have no clarity on what it is. It
may, perhaps, be a spiritual or paranormal experience and there are case
studies that show this could be possible. See the paper noted in the
blog post below. It's the case of a woman who self-diagnosed through her
voices. In terms of society's judgement of hearing voices and psychosis
this single case is the opposite of the case of Abraham in that this
woman's experience was benign and there was no risk of homicide. There
are other cases detailed in Accepting Voices by Marius Romme and Sandra
Escher.
http://www.mind.org.uk/shop/books/self-management_self-help/274_accepting_voices
Anyway, this factor of the internal experience being the source of the
change in brain volume may be significant. The debate about changes and
differences in brain matter and volume as non-pathological is a bloody
hard one.
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