Turning this measurement around, the team calculated that a 1cm decrease in the length of the furrow corresponded to a 20% increase in the risk of experiencing hallucinations.
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A few people with schizophrenia have hallucinations, which means they see, hear, smell or feel things that nobody else experiences. Now, a new study sheds light on this condition and suggests that there are differences in a key region of the brain for people with schizophrenia who have hallucinations, compared with those who do not.
That’s according to a study published this week (November 17) in Nature Communications of 153 people, a few of whom had schizophrenia with and without hallucinations and a few who did not.
The folds in the brain known as paracingulate sulcus are a type of structural folds that develop before birth and the length that they have varies for each individual. The varying lengths of the PCS are associated with the reality monitoring process for healthy individuals.
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. Reality monitoring represents the ability of a person to distinguish between what is real and what is not.
The study could not determine whether PCS length is a causal factor in hallucinations in schizophrenia. As the PCS helps us identify information that we have fabricated, people with shorter folds could be less able to identify the source of this information and are more likely to process it as if it had been generated externally, according to the researchers that conducted the study. They found that fold’s length had reduced by one centimeter in participants diagnosed with schizophrenia. Abnormal development in regions of the brain which influence visual or auditory perception could contribute to hallucinations as well.
Dr. John Simons defined schizophrenia as a mass of multiple different conditions within a person’s brain. This makes it hard for researchers to identify specific connections between areas of the brain and symptoms typically observed in patients.
“The brain develops throughout life, but aspects such as whether the PCS is going to be a particularly prominent fold – or not -may be apparent in the brain at an early stage”, said Jon Simons, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, UK.
It is also important to note that this effect appeared to be consistent regardless of whether the hallucinations were auditory or visual in nature.
Individuals who suffer from hallucinations may perceive information incorrectly because the process of reality monitoring for regions surrounding the PCS are likely affected by changes in their brain.
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Garrison, also a member of the psychology department, said the investigators think “PCS is involved in brain networks that help us recognize information that has been generated ourselves”.
