STRANGE ENCOUNTERS AT THE FRONTIERS OF OUR SEPARATE WORLDS

A person asked me just now why we treat people who have strange
beliefs as inferior in mental health.

And this 's my reply to him:

Inferior in mental health? No, we don't think so.
But let me explain a few things you don't know.

Inside the brains of people with psychosis, two key systems are
malfunctioning: a "filter" that directs attention toward important
external events and internal thoughts, and a "predictor" composed of
pathways that anticipate rewards.

Dysfunction of these systems makes it difficult to know what's real,
manifesting as hallucinations and delusions. The findings come from a
study, published April 11 in Molecular Psychiatry (1), that used brain
scan data from children, teens and young adults with psychosis. The
results confirm an existing theory of how breaks with reality occur.

The findings, observed in individuals with a rare genetic disease
called 22q11.2 deletion syndrome who experience psychosis as well as
in those with psychosis of unknown origin, advance scientists'
understanding of the underlying brain mechanisms and theoretical
frameworks related to psychosis.

During psychosis, patients experience hallucinations, such as hearing
voices, and hold delusional beliefs, such as thinking that
things/people who are not real exist. Psychosis can occur on its own
and is a hallmark of certain serious mental illnesses, including
bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is also
characterized by social withdrawal, disorganized thinking and speech,
and a reduction in energy and motivation.

It is challenging to study how schizophrenia begins in the brain. The condition usually emerges in teens or young adults, most of whom soon begin taking antipsychotic medications to ease their symptoms. When researchers analyze brain scans from people with established schizophrenia, they cannot distinguish the effects of the disease from the effects of the medications. They also do not know how schizophrenia changes the brain as the disease progresses.

To get an early view of the disease process, the Stanford Medicine team studied young people aged 6 to 39 with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, a genetic condition with a 30% risk for psychosis, schizophrenia or both.

Brain function in 22q11.2 patients who have psychosis is similar to that in people with psychosis of unknown origin, they found. And these brain patterns matched what the researchers had previously theorized was generating psychosis symptoms.

The brain patterns researchers identified support their theoretical  models of how cognitive control systems malfunction in psychosis .Thoughts that are not linked to reality can capture the brain's cognitive control networks. This process derails the normal functioning of cognitive control, allowing intrusive thoughts to dominate, culminating in symptoms we recognize as psychosis.

Normally, the brain's cognitive filtering system—aka the salience network—works behind the scenes to selectively direct our attention to important internal thoughts and external events. With its help, we can dismiss irrational thoughts and unimportant events and focus on what's real and meaningful to us, such as paying attention to traffic so we avoid a collision.

The ventral striatum, a small brain region, and associated brain pathways driven by dopamine, play an important role in predicting what will be rewarding or important.

The hallucinations have been created even in labs. If you want you
too can have these experiences in labs.
 I have given 22 reasons why people hallucinate ghosts and feel other
strange things.
https://kkartlab.in/group/some-science/forum/topics/science-and-the...

                                                                    ----

Okay, now if people say they see (hallucinate) ghosts (spirits) that
are actually  made of souls (that have no genuine evidence at all),
say that they hear voices that don't exist, we know that they are
suffering from schizophrenia. And when others around them too believe
them and think these things really exist, we get strange feelings when
we know why this happens.
And when we try to explain things, if they refuse to listen to us and
still believe in stories told by schizophrenics, and live in their own
ancient/pseudo worlds, this is a facepalm situation for us.

We scientists face such strange situations everyday.
Okay, if you want to believe only people who have mental health
issues, that is your problem.
But we have our right to have strange feelings about you, if you too
behave that way.
No, don't blame us for it. We have our reasons to do so.

Molecular Psychiatry (2024): Kaustubh Supekar, Carlo de los Angeles, Srikanth Ryali, Leila Kushan, Charlie Schleifer, Gabriela Repetto, Nicolas A. Crossley, Tony Simon, Carrie E. Bearden, Vinod Menon. Robust and replicable functional brain signatures of 22q11.2 deletion syndrome and associated psychosis: a deep neural network-based multi-cohort study. Molecular Psychiatry, 2024; DOI: 10.1038/s41380-024-02495-8

https://med.stanford.edu/