Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Understanding schizophrenia: What exactly is schizophrenia?

paulmorrison.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 81 posts

Re: Understanding schizophrenia: What exactly is schizophrenia?

#21

Post by derefr »

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #19
progr4mmatic wrote: post #14

Maybe this is because I've been watching Maniac but I've been thinking about this. My hypothesis is based upon the idea that the brain's main purpose is to make sense of the world and to do that it makes predictions and theories of "world" as it goes about. Schizophrenia just seems like this process on overdrive where some of the key processes involved with keeping this overall process stable go awry. One of these mi…

It seems more like a defect in attention, but not a deficit; it’s an overabundance of attention to irrelevant details that the brain ascribes significant meaning to. The reason I have this hypothesis is that ADHD patients tend to have lower concentration of dopamine, whereas schizophrenics have a higher concentration than normal. An example would be ascribing significant meaning to an event that is random. But for th…

On a lower level, the brain has two hierarchies of synapses: a top-down processing hierarchy, driven by the neurochemical AMPA, and the bottom-up processing hierarchy, driven by the neurochemical NMDA. These hierarchies have salience passed back and forth between them by dopaminergic and adrenergic signalling from other brain regions. Whichever side of processing is "dominant" at the time, is training its dual to respond with the signals the active side is receiving, in response to the signals the active side is sending. Additionally, the bottom-up processing hierarchy is wired to your senses and your motor neurons.

In short, the top-down processing hierarchy is "the model", and the bottom-up processing hierarchy is "the evidence." The brain switches between using the evidence to train the model (when the evidence is salient and the model is weak), and using the model to predict and "fill in for" the evidence (when the model is salient and the evidence is noisy.)

It would make a lot of sense to me if psychosis were simply a result of chronically overdriven AMPA signalling, such that evidence is always being "fit to" the existing model, with the bottom-up hierarchy never being granted enough dominance to use the evidence to correct the model.

Re: Understanding schizophrenia: What exactly is schizophrenia?

#22

Post by drkstr »

I have a good friend who was diagnosed with schizophrenia before he graduated high school. It was very tragic to watch. Who was once such a bright and capable person, can no longer function in normal society. I found it very difficult to invite him places. Often times I would need to back him up in a physical fight. He wasn't violent, simply incapable of seperating reality from what he saw, often times taking the form of disturbing subjects such as women or children being raped. And being the good person he was at heart, would not let something like that go, but would rather confront it right on. At wich point the person being accused of such a heinous act would do one of two things; Realize the guy clearly has some kind of mental issue and leave the area a bit shaken but no worse for wear, or more frequent the case, challenge him to a fight, even assaulting him with deadly weapons in some cases. When he wasn't engaged in some form of direct confrontation, he would be yelling racial slurs at the tormentors in his head. And the torment was constant. I am sorry to say there was even a period in my life when I stopped being a friend and started being someone concerned with ones own social standing, wich of course in my mind, had no room for any social pariahs tagging along.

Fast forward 10 years when his mother passes away, his other family had written him off long ango, and we find our tragic hero homeless, with symptoms noticeably worse than before. being the only person he trusted, it was up to me to get him the help he needs. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. I gave him a room in my house, which was the least I could do really, and even helped cosign for a car. But all of this mattered little in changing his actual situation, which still seemed to be getting worse not better. The challenge for me was balancing the line between being a friend, and being just another person trying to convince him his mental model is faulty and he needs treatment. For one reason or another he absolutely refused to go. He called that place rape factory, and insisted he'd rather be homeless then spend even a single night there. And who am I to hold the definitive truth on reality? Where I saw dysfunction, he saw a "gift of sight," only a few are capable of. In the end, I'm afraid that my unwillingness to convince him he has a problem is coming more from a position of weakness rather than strength. Had I been able to convince him to get treatment, than perhaps he wouldn't be in jail today, and I wouldn't have lost the lease to my house; ultimately leading to my own homelessness to this day.

Despite all of the headaches, I learned some valuable lessons from Ben. Mostly, don't worry so much what other's think of you. Take life as it comes without being so serious all the time. And reality is not some fixed thing, and is mostly a function of the beholder.

Re: Understanding schizophrenia: What exactly is schizophrenia?

#23

Post by Mononokay »

dwaltrip wrote: post #9
monotone666 wrote: post #5

40% of cases of schizophrenia are from the immune system attacking synapses in the brain.

I've never heard this before. I echo the other commenter's request for sources.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-018-0235-x

Re: Understanding schizophrenia: What exactly is schizophrenia?

#24

Post by AgentME »

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #19
progr4mmatic wrote: post #14

Maybe this is because I've been watching Maniac but I've been thinking about this. My hypothesis is based upon the idea that the brain's main purpose is to make sense of the world and to do that it makes predictions and theories of "world" as it goes about. Schizophrenia just seems like this process on overdrive where some of the key processes involved with keeping this overall process stable go awry. One of these mi…

It seems more like a defect in attention, but not a deficit; it’s an overabundance of attention to irrelevant details that the brain ascribes significant meaning to. The reason I have this hypothesis is that ADHD patients tend to have lower concentration of dopamine, whereas schizophrenics have a higher concentration than normal. An example would be ascribing significant meaning to an event that is random. But for th…

I saw schizophrenia described by a person with it as "dreaming while you're wide awake". In a dream, your brain jumps on any details to invent more details to continue the dream. In a dream, if your brain says the dry cleaners are a shady government organization, then that's a valid and successful continuation of the dream, and dream reality bends to that. In waking reality, not so much.

Re: Understanding schizophrenia: What exactly is schizophrenia?

#25

Post by woodandsteel »

pygy_ wrote: post #10

I'm surprised the article still considers schizophrenia as a single entity, when evidence points to there being several diseases with symptoms overlapping to some degree...

At the bottom it says that the next post will be on what causes schizophrenia, and I imagine the author will get into the different diseases there.

Re: Understanding schizophrenia: What exactly is schizophrenia?

#26

Post by baccheion »

AgentME wrote: post #24
0x8BADF00D wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems more like a defect in attention, but not a deficit; it’s an overabundance of attention to irrelevant details that the brain ascribes significant meaning to. The reason I have this hypothesis is that ADHD patients tend to have lower concentration of dopamine, whereas schizophrenics have a higher concentration than normal. An example would be ascribing significant meaning to an event that is random. But for th…

I saw schizophrenia described by a person with it as "dreaming while you're wide awake". In a dream, your brain jumps on any details to invent more details to continue the dream. In a dream, if your brain says the dry cleaners are a shady government organization, then that's a valid and successful continuation of the dream, and dream reality bends to that. In waking reality, not so much.

NMDA antagonists usually make it possible to dream while awake. Low NMDA goes with higher dopamine and higher NMDA with norepinephrine. Schizophrenia is said to be associated with poor NMDA signaling (high agmatine, low D-serine/coagonists, high NMDA receptor antibodies, etc).

Re: Understanding schizophrenia: What exactly is schizophrenia?

#27

Post by DougN7 »

drkstr wrote: post #22

I have a good friend who was diagnosed with schizophrenia before he graduated high school. It was very tragic to watch. Who was once such a bright and capable person, can no longer function in normal society. I found it very difficult to invite him places. Often times I would need to back him up in a physical fight. He wasn't violent, simply incapable of seperating reality from what he saw, often times taking the for…

I’m sorry to hear about your experiences. As his friend early on, do you think anything ‘triggered’ the disease? Trying drugs, abuse, trauma, anything? Or is it just something that sort of slowly grew and evolved?

Re: Understanding schizophrenia: What exactly is schizophrenia?

#28

Post by pzone »

drkstr wrote: post #22

I have a good friend who was diagnosed with schizophrenia before he graduated high school. It was very tragic to watch. Who was once such a bright and capable person, can no longer function in normal society. I found it very difficult to invite him places. Often times I would need to back him up in a physical fight. He wasn't violent, simply incapable of seperating reality from what he saw, often times taking the for…

What a terrible disease.

Re: Understanding schizophrenia: What exactly is schizophrenia?

#29

Post by califff »

david-cako wrote: post #18
califff wrote: post #8

Schizophrenia is what Mohammed suffered from, which caused him to think Allah was talking to him. In actuality, his brain was malfunctioning due to Schizophrenia.

On the contrary, it's possible that transcendent experiences are built into the human psyche, and that schizophrenia-like disorders are examples of the extreme end of suggestibility and ruminative thought -- i.e., an inability to properly interface with subconscious processes. The brain is a storyteller for the conscious experience, and yet the deeper that rabbit hole goes into creativity and analysis, the more disci…

Wrong. The claim that you make has been subjected to scientific testing already and it has been shown to be bogus. There is no evidence for human-god communication and there is no evidence for gods.

Re: Understanding schizophrenia: What exactly is schizophrenia?

#30

Post by icantdrive55 »

drkstr wrote: post #22

I have a good friend who was diagnosed with schizophrenia before he graduated high school. It was very tragic to watch. Who was once such a bright and capable person, can no longer function in normal society. I found it very difficult to invite him places. Often times I would need to back him up in a physical fight. He wasn't violent, simply incapable of seperating reality from what he saw, often times taking the for…

You are a good person. A better peson than myself.
Post reply on HN