Earlier, "voices in the head" were the way straight to a mental hospital. From history, we know many cases when people explained their behavior by the fact that they heard certain voices.
- So a serial maniac named David Brekowitz, nicknamed "Son of Sam", said that he committed all the murders because a demon ordered him to do it through a neighbor's dog.
- Joan of Arc was inspired by three holy voices that propelled her to revolt against the rule of England.
- Many of the biblical characters constantly talked with God, who presented himself to them in various forms.
But if people earlier believed that these voices were a manifestation of higher consciousness, then in our time it raises great doubts, and modern scientists look at this phenomenon in a new way.
VOICES IN THE HEAD: A MENTAL DISORDER?
More recently, statements that we hear some voices in our heads were regarded as a sign of a lost consciousness. Back in the middle of the last century, this was a serious reason due to which a person could thunder into a psychiatric clinic, even if he did not show other signs of the disease.
But over time, scientists in the study of this phenomenon began to conclude that hallucination of hearing is not always a mental disorder.
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A very large proportion of patients with schizophrenia actually hear any voices: US statistics show that this is manifested in 70-75% of such patients; 10-30% of those with bipolarity disorder also have this problem. However, some mentally healthy people also claim to experience auditory hallucinations from time to time.
The lines between normal and abnormal mental state are getting narrower every day. Many psychiatrists are beginning to admit that the same symptom in one case may be a manifestation of the disease, in another it may not.
It is necessary to start treating the disease only if it begins to progress and cause suffering to the patient himself.
According to many scientists, psychosis is divided into several more categories. Voices in the head should not be confused with general psychosis, since science still does not fully know where auditory hallucinations come from.
DIFFERENT VIEWS ON AUDITOR HALLUCINATIONS
Unexplained sounds or visual hallucinations are usually accompanied by fear and anxiety. But there are many people who talk about voices in their heads from a positive side. They claim that the voices helped them in difficult moments in life or calmed them down when it was difficult for them at heart.
Interestingly, auditory hallucinations vary from culture to culture. Research by Stanford University scientist Tanya Maria Luhrman has shown that in the collective communities of schizophrenic patients in Africa and the East, they have a positive attitude to sound hallucinations. In their opinion, the voices in their heads are very positive and friendly.
In the United States, the view on these phenomena is usually negative. Although among people of almost all nationalities there are those who treat the inner voices positively, considering it a gift of fate.
RESEARCHES OF MODERN SCIENTISTS
By the early 21st century, scientists' interest in auditory hallucinations had grown significantly. They began to be investigated not only as mental disorders, but also separately from them.
This has been done for several years by doctors from Yale University Albert Powers and Phillip Corlett. They investigated the differences between people who hear unexplained voices but no longer have any mental health problems and people who have mental health problems.
For research, scientists have collected two groups of people. In the first, they invited those who are usually called mediums and clairvoyants. These people claimed that they periodically hear incomprehensible voices. They underwent a psychiatric examination, which confirmed that they were telling the truth. The second group was made up of psychiatric patients.
Comparing the groups, it turned out that both "mediums" and psychiatric patients describe their feelings very similarly: voices speak to them with approximately the same volume, frequency and timbre.
"Mediums" of voices in the head are evaluated as something positive, as an affirmation of some higher power or reason. At the same time, patients evaluate the voices negatively, as punishment, torment, or a consequence of any disease that they previously suffered from.
Mediums also report that their voices heard and how they feel are very different. Either a deceased grandmother or another relative can talk to a person, then he begins to "hear" a figure that his friend invented, then he makes fictional friends from childhood.
VOICES IN THE HEAD: REASONS OF APPEARANCE
Scientists identify several reasons for the appearance of voices in the head.
FANTASY BRAIN
One of the hypotheses of the appearance of "voices in the head" explains that in this way our brain looks for meaning in what is happening around us and tries to explain it.
“Instead of direct passive information, we get sensory information, which actively makes up world forecasts and seeks meaning in them,” - this is how Ben Alderson-Day, a psychologist at the University of Durham in the UK, explains this phenomenon.
This is called predictive coding. That is, when part of our experience associated with the surrounding reality is not perceived, and the brain relies not on what is actually happening, but on what we want or are afraid to see.
Therefore, people can see figures in the clouds, the faces of saints on a slice of bread from a toaster and various things on Rorschach tests. Following this hypothesis, people who hear voices can be quite healthy, they are simply better than everyone else at finding meaning in their dreams and fantasies.
Powers and Corlet were able to confirm the theory of the connection between voices and brain expectations in one of their experiments.
The participants in the experiment were divided into 4 groups. The first was a group of people "hearing voices", consisting of psychiatric patients, the second group were healthy people, but claiming that they also hear extraneous voices. The other two groups consisted of people who did not hear extraneous voices. But in one of them there were mentally ill people, and in the other completely healthy.
During the experiment, the activity of the brain of each participant was measured by simultaneously turning on the sound and light signals. Sometimes the sound could be made out, and sometimes there was no sound at all. But even in complete silence, the participants claimed that they heard a voice at the time when the light signal came on.
It is interesting that in both groups of “hearing voices” this effect was manifested much more actively than in the groups of “not hearing voices”. This may indicate that some people tend to “invent” sounds more for themselves and rely on the expectations of their brains than others.
According to psychiatrists, such “staged” hallucinations are another evidence that the human internal system itself interprets and predicts what it wants.
"Hallucinations can arise from an imbalance of expectations and reality," Powers says. "You can hear what you want, not what it really is."
NATURAL ABILITIES
Under the direction of Alderson-Day, psychologists at the University of Durham conducted an interesting experiment. They gathered 2 groups of people, into one they united "mediums" who hear voices, another group consisted of ordinary people.
The scientists used audio recordings of a voice that closely resembled a sine curve - such recordings are used to test hearing in humans. In such a recording, some of the components are missing, because of this they sound like a collection of noises and whistles. It is possible to understand what is spoken in them if it is known in advance, or if there is experience of listening to such recordings.
The doctors recorded several audio tracks. Some had sine-wave speech, others had some sine-wave noise. While listening, subjects were required to press a button on an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) scanner when they heard sounds unlike those found in the rest of the audio recording.
The volunteers had no idea that speech was used only in some audio fragments. After the experiment, the researchers conducted a survey if people heard a human voice when listening. It turned out that in the control group of "ordinary" people, about half of the participants heard the speech, but in the group of "hearing voices" three quarters. And this is a rather significant difference.
In addition, people "hearing voices" were able to recognize the voice much earlier than "control" people who do not hear voices. Also, the scan showed that listening to such mixed soundtracks, additional zones were activated in the brain of the "mediums". This suggests that "mediums" speech (even the most fuzzy) recognize much better and faster than ordinary people.
The scope of this experiment was small, only 30 people. Its result should be confirmed by larger-scale experiments. Due to certain reasons, scientists cannot work with large coverage while investigating similar phenomena. Thus, the Durham University experiment is the largest study using fMRI, which studied the category of people who hear extraneous sounds, but do not have any mental disorders.
UNKNOWN SPEAKER WORK
There is also another interesting explanation for the phenomenon of auditory hallucinations. It often happens that psychiatric patients unconsciously strain the muscles of the speech apparatus. In this way, they can provoke or maintain both their own and other people's auditory hallucinations.
This is confirmed by another experiment, which showed that people experiencing auditory hallucinations are much worse at recognizing their voice from the outside. If you process their voice and mix it with other voices, they will not recognize it. Based on this, it can be argued that the mysterious voice heard may be their own voice.
CONCLUSION
So far, these are just theories. The researchers acknowledge that we still know very little about auditory hallucinations.
Be that as it may, it is now clear that "voices in the head" are not a symptom, and healthy people often experience them too.
The use of psychotropic drugs, lack of sleep, migraines, emotional shock can all lead to auditory or visual hallucinations.
Based on data from the World Health Organization, surveys were conducted in 18 countries on the topic of auditory hallucinations. They showed that one in 20 people at some point in their life hears voices in their heads or sees something that is not really there.
"The power that consciousness can use against itself is amazing," says Albert Powers. "We're just starting to understand the biology behind it."
