When psychiatric patients hear voices, do they actually hear anything or are there really sound implulses that do not orginate in the ear? Any help. Thanks
You’re just jealous cause the voices only talk to me.
Psychotic patients certainly think they can hear people talking to them. Often they identify the voices as being inside their head, but not always. After treatment, they often have enough insight to realize their brain is “playing tricks” on them. In more severe psychosis, they may hear several voices. Usually the voices make negative comments consistent with their deflated self-esteem, sometimes they make suggestions, occasionally voices say only positive comments such as “Stay the course, big insider, you’re doing just super”. These patients miss the voices when they go.
Paprica’s respobse might be correct, but it does not answer the question as it was asked.
Q: or are there really sound implulses that do not orginate in the ear?
If you mean “sound waves” or “sounds”, the answer is NO by definition. (BTW, What originates in the ear?) Or do you mean to say “sound impulses” in the brain? Please explain because there are no “sound impulses” in the brain, only electrical or chemica, activity (no light, etc.)
Vocal hallucinations are by definition “sound” only in patient’s brain; if somebody else hears them, they are real. Electrical brain activity was registered during hallucinations. At this time it is not possible to pinpoint it to the neurons which normally “hear” voices. It’s actually more complicated, because simple “hearing” does not equal “voice hearing”, i.e. the brain “hear” and analyzes sounds (makes sense of them) separately.
I’m sure I’m not the only one here who occassionally hears voices (we’re all a little crazy!) [no we’re not!!]
For me, every once in a while I will here someone say my name… weird! I can be laying in bed, all by my lonesome 
and I’ll hear “Dan” just as clear as day!
Sometimes I can identify the voice, sometimes not, but it always makes me smile! I think my brain is just messing with me…
When I’m tanked, sometimes I do hear voices. And they’re all in my head, so I guess they’re not “real audio” voices; they’re more like my brain “recalling” what’s a voice sounds like. Or something like that.
One thing I read recently, and I’ll try to find the source, was that when schizophrenics hear voice, the parts of their brain associated with hearing are quite active, while the parts of their brain assocaited with speaking are not. This was said to indicate that the schizophrenics are not simply talking to themselves silently.
I’m not sure if these patients were compared to people from the general population who were told just to talk to themselves silently while the brain scan was going on. That would be an interesting study - if “silent self-talk” does make your speech-oriented brain zones active, then schizophrenic voice-hearing is definitely something different. (Obviously, “out-loud self-talk” would make your speech centers fire, but the question, does just thinking, “Remember your car keys, me!” constitute a speech activity.)
Anyway, audio hallucinations are a fascinating part of psychology which isn’t completely understood by the pros (and is, as you might expect, not understood at all by me). It’s interesting that schizophrenics tend to hear so many voices saying grammatically-correct, discernible things. It’s not like taking some hallucinogen and hearing the pretty flowers playing the glockenspiel. Non-voice hallucinations may be a part of a schizophrenic’s inner world, but I haven’t heard nearly as much about them.
I think what’s going on is best described by the word’s etymology - schizophrenia means “divided self” if I’m not mistaken. Some people take this too literally and think it means multiple personality disorder; it doesn’t. What it does mean is that a schizophrenic is separated from certain parts of her or his own mind. So a thought that you or I might consider to be figuratively “that nagging little voice” becomes just that in the mind of the patient, only the poor individual can’t make it stop, and can’t integrate it into the rest of the mind. After all, if the voice tells you to remember your keys, you can do that; what if the voice told you they were watching you, and that you couldn’t go home, and had to walk the streets alone day and night? It’s a scary thought.
But obviously schizophrenia differs a lot from patient to patient. Not all the hallucinations are the same, or even comparable.
Audio hallucinations are also fairly common in people with sleep deprivation. It’s like when you’re awake, but ‘dreaming’ about something speaking to you. Kinda hard to explain, tho, you have to experience it. But the voice is more sensed, in the brain, than actually “heard”.
I’m generally sleep deprived, and experience the waking dream phenomenom on a regular basis. Sometimes I can close my eyes and experience the dream then open my eyes and experience reality. It is quite weird, even when my eyes are open, it is like the dream is going on in the background, I can hear it sometimes.
Also, I experience audio and visual anomalies, such as seeing somebody move in the corner of my eyes, but when I turn to look, nobody is there, or like I’ll be upstairs and hear the TV on downstairs, but when I go down to look, the TV is not really on.
This stuff really freaked me out when I was kid, I thought our house was haunted. But now as an adult, it is something I am used to, and doesn’t happen that often anymore.
I used to work in a psychiatry hospital… and none of the “pros” understand what makes the human mind do anything!
This is why psychology is called a “soft” science…
don’t mean to sound anti-psychology… but I am!
Of course, everyone should remember that psychiatry and psychology are two very different things. And while there may be ongiong battles over the therapeutic and diagnostic tools used by psychiatrists, they are in fact still MDs, whereas psychologists are not.
Point acknowledged… but I still think psychology & psychiatry are light years away from acually doing anything other than treating symptoms with mega-doses of drugs that seem to work without anyone knowing why…
Have I mentioned today that sometimes the voices in my head yodel? I really hate that.
Satchmo, many years ago a composer, normal otherwise, told me that he “hears music in his head”. He thought, for the long time, that everybody heard music and was very surprised that it was not so. I do not mean familiar musical recollections we all experience.He hears unheard music, almost constantly. And I assume the OP was about other voices, not the inner speech, like “Remember your car keys”.
Being pretty deaf, I can answer this one. They are extremely clear voices but they are not true audio.
I think that everyone hears voices but they don’t understand that is what they are hearing. They are often seeing & hearing thoughts, which is similar. Im sure all of you can hear imaginary music if you put your mind to it.
It’s quite alright if you hear voices in your head. It’s like channels on a tv, the real psychotics tune into a channel & it becomes their reality.
People don’t hear voices in their heads! It’s just a load of (shut up! I’m busy right now! No, killing mom isn’t until tomorrow-) bullpoopy perpetuated by murderers who need excuses for their behavior.
Melpomene, this is a bit off topic, but I’ll share my opinion, mods permitting. Psychotic people do “hear” voices; at least with their deranged minds they cannot distinguish between the real and “internal” voices. Criminals claim that they “hear voices”. It may or may not be true (criminals may be psychotic). But I, for instance, will not kill anyone, whether ordered by you or a “voice”. Acting on anyone commands (real or “heard”) is illegal in my opinion and I do not understand why some juries view it as “mitigating” circumstance.
I understand that peace. Thank you. I was simply trying to throw in some light humor. I’ve spent much of my free time studying habitual murderers, particularly serial killers. I apologize if you took my post as either offensive or literal. From now on I will keep my humor to the “appropriate” threads.
Hoping this doesn’t kill a good thread,
Melpomene
Melpomene, that’s just what I said. It’s like tv, regular people just listen to the various channels, but psychotics tune in to one specific channel & it becomes their reality. cool too. It takes a lot of intelligence to make a new reality, so high IQ people are often excellent subjects.
peace, I think the mitigating circumstances are not simply the psychotic persons saying, “I was only following orders!” to get out of it. The fact that they hear/heard voices is in indication of their irrationality. It’s difficult to pin down what exactly the voices are or what their power is, but most every psychiatrist will agree that someone hearing voices ordering them around is suffering from serious mental illness.
Also consider that if you believe those who have heard them, the voices are constant – or nearly so. It’s not just the occasional whispered name or phrase a lot of people might hallucinate. Imagine being shouted at, sung at, talked at by more than one person that you don’t know how to quiet, and who won’t stop for hours at a time. It’s probably even worse than that, since you may or may not know it’s all in your mind, and others may not believe you.
Side note : While I’ve seen what happens with psychosis, joking about it is something I do still find funny – though hopefully one realizes that it is gallows humor, not just something that is remote and not very serious. On the other hand, I hope it is something that remains remote for as many as possible.