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SnappingRope
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Talking Apr 23, 2023 at 03:02 PM
  #1
Schizophrenia comes in a few shades and probably has a few causes. The following argument, if correct, would only relate to some cases rather than all.

Studies have revealed that schizophrenia is correlated with certain brain structures. One such correlation is with reduced volume of an inter-hemispheric tract known as the anterior commissure (AC).

Little is definitively known about the role of the AC but studies have shown it is important for divided attention (among other things). This may be central to understanding schizophrenia:

Suppose you cannot divide your attention. Instead of experiencing historical memories as a present tense 'me' with one attentional foot in the present and the other in the past a person who cannot divide their attention will experience the past without attentional division. The past is instead experienced as a singular present tense experience as if it is the one and only reality occurring right now.

The same will be true of imagination: instead of the attention being divided between your present tense reality and the imaginary one the imaginary reality represents all reality because you cannot properly divide your attention.

A few things naturally arise as a result this. The first is that the self does not seamlessly continue from one moment to the next but instead suffers radical dissociation as a result of either remembering or imagining or even just shifting focus. For a normal person they are still the person they are now as they recall the past, therefore there is a continuing aspect of both the self and the present tense reality that threads seamlessly from one moment into the next. For a person with insufficient anterior commissure fibres this moment's self and the reality within which it exists is radically displaced when a memory is entertained.

What this means is that painful memories remain painful because any coping strategy you subsequently learn can't be 'taken with you' when you revisit a memory. Your current self ceases to exist while you relive the memory as it was. You cannot divide your attention so as to enable the current self to use current wisdom to ease the memory.

This inability to attenuate the pain of a past memory means that any kind of trauma or hardship endured will forever serve as a minefield for the subconscious to stumble around in. It can never be healed because you cannot take any tools with you when you step on a mine (step into a memory). It seems telling that most schizophrenics are diagnosed after experiencing some kind of stress/hardship.

Once you have a trauma/pain minefield in your head your already chopped up sense of continuity becomes even more problematic. Now your subconscious has to navigate a seemingly unavoidable minefield with no way of knowing when you're next going to trigger a painful transportation back to a traumatic time.

Emotion starts as a signal in the brain. That signal is sent to the body and the body has some physical sensation. That sensation is then sent back to the brain and experienced as emotion. The point of emotions is to motivate survival advantageous behaviour. When you have powerful emotions like intense fear the body goes beyond flight or fight and right into catatonia. This is the body's last line of defence: if you cannot fight or flee you had better play dead. The sufferer of this kind of emotional intensity will feel like they are suffocating because their body has experienced a momentary inability to move/breathe.

That level of emotion cuts off circuitry from the hypothalamus to the prefrontal cortex, which means your thinking conscious self is cut off from access to your emotional self. If your thinking/conscious self is not present during the event it will not be wired into he memory of the event, and consequently voluntary conscious retrieval becomes impossible. This adds an extra element of disconnect to an already disjointed thread of existence.

Since you cannot consciously remember what led to you stepping on a memory-mine the subconscious cannot benefit from conscious redirection away from where it encountered the mine. This uncertainty about traumatic re-triggering leads to a constant fear-load on the subconscious, which in turn bleeds outward into consciousness by taking the form of paranoia. The mind knows there is something to fear, but is powerless to learn what it is or use/develop skills to navigate around it. It can neither know where the mines are, nor divide the attention such that newly learned skills can be present and useful when the memory takes over.

Now we have a mind that is wary and afraid and liable to experience imagination with undivided attention. This is a mind prone to psychosis. When your mind is afraid but does not know the source of its fear it will start to hypothesize. Those hypotheses are essentially the imagination seeking answers, but since a lack of anterior commissure fibres means the attention cannot be properly divided whatever you imagine is experienced as a complete undivided reality. There is no sense that your imagined reality is not real because it completely displaces the previous reality.

Your body has emotional responses to that imagined reality, and the physical impact of those emotions gives sensory credence to the imagined reality, making it difficult to discredit - 'I know it's true because it FEELS true'.

At the same time there is a schism: there is a self who experiences present tense reality, and there is a self that experiences imagined realities. The two cannot fact-check or cross-examine one another because that would require divided attention. Instead each reality is discrete and untouchable such that even if the present tense self is presented with irrefutable evidence against delusional beliefs the latter cannot be dislodged because they belong to a different self.

Disjointed psychic continuity allows disparate aspects of the self to subconsciously come into contact with thoughts/memories/etc that they do not consider to be their own. This could lead sufferers to believe others are 'putting thoughts in my head' or that others are 'controlling' their thoughts.

Problems with self-care, routine, and motivation: the future exists in imagination. A person with diminished ability to divide their attention will experience the future not as a moment divided between their present self and the imagined reality, but instead wholly as the imagined reality. This creates a clean break from one experience to the next such that any goal created in the imaginary plane will be disconnected from present tense reality.

Motivation needs a goal, and a goal must be imagined. But for some schizophrenics goals are generated in realities that are detached from their current reality. Therefore the goals are not reliably accessible, and aspects of daily living such as self care and routine will be difficult to remain motivated toward.

Got a headache, so I'll leave it there. Hope it makes sense.
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Default Apr 24, 2023 at 10:56 AM
  #2
It makes sense to me but I actually had to read parts of your post a couple of times to get the gist of it. Sounds very intriguing too. And it makes sense out of a lot of things that previously were obscure. I am not qualified to evaluate your theory but it does seem to shed light on a lot of things. Thanks so much for sharing it. It will be interesting to see if the future of schizophrenia research incorporates things you have thought of. I have thought to things on my own that later Cognitive Behavioral Therapy came to recognize so I know such discoveries as yours can be shown to be correct.
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Default Apr 25, 2023 at 11:52 PM
  #3
Thanks for your reply Yaowen. Sorry my words were hard to understand - I don't always communicate well. You are a kind individual, always taking the time to reply to things that go unanswered. I appreciate you reading and making a comment. Thanks.
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Default Apr 27, 2023 at 05:55 PM
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A new drug for schizophrenia has been released-wow, new hope for people with very difficult disorders. I hope the side effects arent serious.

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Default Apr 28, 2023 at 09:41 PM
  #5
Which one?

I heard there is another one about to go to FDA for approval. It’s supposed to have way less side effects especially weight gain.’

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