My understanding is that auditory hallucinations are more common in schizophrenia which makes this more of a WTF.
Aphantasiac here so this raises an obvious question. Cursory search suggests visual hallucinations due to drugs or schizophrenia are reported. Conscious and involuntary visualisation seem to be somewhat independent.
Huh. I wonder if that means my inability to visualize mentally means I’m partly/fully defended against it? That would explain a subgroup prevalence!
Probably not you are likely an afantist though
Off topic, but do deaf people ever hear voices?
I’ve heard they actually see people signing at them. Also, in India, the voices are actually nice and encouraging I’ve heard.
Contrary to popular belief not all delusions and hallucinations are horrifying. Similarly, not all of them compel people to do bad things. There are cases of schizophrenics who had voices and hallucinations telling them to be good to people and go out of their way to help strangers. There's definitely all sorts though it's not like one or the other or that a person only has one type.
If I'm very tired (after I had insomnia for two or so days) I have mild hallucinations, and they're pretty boring/benign. But mine are more auditory than visual.
This isn't unusual when people are sleep deprived though. I think lots of people just don't realise they are hallucinating in that state
> Also, in India, the voices are actually nice and encouraging I’ve heard.
And you’re not as skeptical of this claim?
I’m not, actually. I think we all have inner voices if we listen, and it’s possible that different societies have different characteristics. One of them could be whether the environment is on the individual’s side or not. A more compatible inner voice could do better in either situation.
And the environment in India is on the individual's side ? Where people starve in broad daylight and corpses float on rivers ?
Probably has more to do with how they regard hallucinations. In some cultures they're regarded as possibly mystical and a good thing, in other cultures they're regarded as strictly a sign of a malfunctioning brain which is of course bad. Even a corpse can create different feelings based on context and beliefs-- ie a corpse at a funeral is a somber memorial, a corpse lying in the street is sad and worrying.
I didn’t say inner voices are scientifically correct. I think they’re an adaptation. Maybe if India had more functioning depressives it wouldn’t be in that situation, who knows?
“…tracking nearly half a million children born in Western Australia between 1980 and 2001. Of those, 1,870 developed schizophrenia, but not one of the 66 children with cortical blindness did.”
Using this data, one would expect to see only 0.25 cases in those 66 blind kids.
Stated differently, there is around a 78% chance of having 0 cases in those 66 by random chance alone.
Dumb.
this is the type of math they should be teaching in high school, not trigonometry and calculus (which should be electives)
I got all interested and you are right. The math isn't mathing. For social science though this is what they have to do to fund more research. At least there isn't a greater incidence? ... ? ... ?
Can you explain how you got that number from the quote? I don’t follow.
Not the original commenter, but the math is (making some implicit, but arguably reasonable assumptions):
Probability that someone in the population has schizophrenia = (1870/500000) = 0.00374
Probability that someone does NOT have schizophrenia = (1 - 0.00374)
Then if we assume that blind people have the same rate of schizophrenia as the population, Probability that 66 blind people ALL don't have schizophrenia = (1 - 0.00374)^66 = 0.78
The sad thing is that IF — by chance — one of those 66 had schizophrenia, the headline would undoubtedly read “Blind children are FOUR TIMES more likely to develop Schizophrenia!”
1870/500000*66 = 0.24684. However, it's "nearly half a million", so let's call it 30000 as a conservative estimate: that's still 0.4114 children in expectance, which isn't very many.
“That sample of blind children is small, but the pattern holds across more than 70 years of evidence: not a single congenitally blind person with schizophrenia has ever been reported.”
It's ok, people in the life sciences are very accustomed to people from other fields assuming they are stupid.