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The Hallucinatory Walk Through Paris That Inspired Deleuze and Guattari | The New Yorker
One doesn’t need to be schizophrenic or have a degree in French theory or urban studies to understand that cities are made up of various complex, interrelated flows: people, traffic, information, goods, sewage, refuse. City agencies exist to manage these flows and seek ways to impose their vision of order on them. In recent decades, American cities have actively encouraged design and zoning that seek to channel the movement and sway of individuals toward officially sanctioned ends. Far beyond neglecting design that includes space for the homeless, particularly those among them suffering from schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, cities keep trying to eliminate or restrict their presence. In New York City, for instance, these “monotopic” or “monocultural” directives can be glimpsed even in supposedly open spaces, like parks. At the smallest and subtlest level, there are those cunning triangular tips on fences and ledges and planters insuring that no one can rest on them. Benches now have blunt metal dividers that make it impossible to lie down. Parks and streets are lit with aggressive floodlighting, and carefully timed sprinklers make sure that anyone sleeping on the grass will wake up soaked. And then there’s the greater presence of police officers, in addition to security cameras, and surveillance. Despite these countermeasures, the city’s homeless population endures, and the bowels of the metropolitan transportation system are as much an incubator of schizophrenic reverie as Besse’s Luxembourg Gardens or the Gare d’Austerlitz, even if less romantic. And still nothing has stopped the occasional schizophrenic from conducting the music of the spheres by stepping out into traffic or climbing down to the subway tracks.
Effect of D2 Antagonists in Smokers With Schizophrenia
Nicotine use in individuals with schizophrenia is extremely common, with recent estimates indicating that 80% of individuals with this condition smoke.[1] Greater smoking in this population has been linked to worse symptoms,[2] susceptibility to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and early mortality;[3] hence, reducing smoking in these patients is a key priority. Evidence suggests that patients taking first-generation antipsychotics, many of which produce potent dopamine (DA) D2 receptor antagonism, experience greater difficulty quitting with evidence-based cessation treatment.[4,5] Because these medications are foundational to the management of schizophrenia, an important question is whether DA D2 receptor antagonists modulate nicotine's reinforcing effects.
Study locates brain areas for understanding metaphors in healthy and schizophrenic people -- ScienceDaily
They found that compared to controls, the patient group showed increased brain activity in certain areas, but lower brain activity in others. For example, the healthy group showed brain activation in the prefrontal cortex (near the front of the brain) and left amygdala (at the centre of the brain, near the top of the brain stem), implying that these are the brain areas where metaphors are normally processed. Instead, schizophrenia patients showed a decreased activation in the temporal suculus (an area ascending from the low central brain towards the back of the head). Researcher Martin Jáni, from the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland said:
"Previous researchers studied brain areas that are connected to impaired metaphor understanding in schizophrenia, so comparing metaphors with literal statements. However, by adding the absurd punchline, we were able to explore the stage at which the deficit occurs. We also used everyday metaphors, which would be easily understood.
Ketogenic Diet for Schizophrenia: Clinical Implication
Abnormal glucose and energy metabolism and mitochondrial functioning are emerging as important pathophysiological mechanism in schizophrenia. Therapeutic ketogenic diet shows promise to interfere with these processes resulting in the restoration of normal synaptic communication and alleviation of the devastating psychiatric symptoms. Furthermore, because of the impact of ketogenic diet on systemic metabolism, it is possible that the metabolic features and cardiovascular risk typical of patients with chronic schizophrenia can be addressed by this dietary intervention. However, more research is needed both at preclinical level and in the form of controlled clinical trials before ketogenic diet can take its place in the mainstream of the treatment and management of schizophrenia.
Broccoli sprout compound may restore brain chemistry imbalance linked to schizophrenia -- ScienceDaily
They say the results advance the hope that supplementing with broccoli sprout extract, which contains high levels of the chemical sulforaphane, may someday provide a way to lower the doses of traditional antipsychotic medicines needed to manage schizophrenia symptoms, thus reducing unwanted side effects of the medicines.
"It's possible that future studies could show sulforaphane to be a safe supplement to give people at risk of developing schizophrenia as a way to prevent, delay or blunt the onset of symptoms," adds Akira Sawa, M.D., Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Johns Hopkins Schizophrenia Center.
Brains of people with schizophrenia-related disorders aren't all the same: New study supports the use of a data-driven approach to identify novel biomarkers -- ScienceDaily
"We know that, on average, people with schizophrenia have more social impairment than people in the general population," says senior author Dr. Aristotle Voineskos in the Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. "But we needed to take an agnostic approach and let the data tell us what the brain-behavioural profiles of our study participants looked like. It turned out that the relationship between brain function and social behaviour had nothing to do with conventional diagnostic categories in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)."
Most brain research in the mental health field compares a disease group to a non-disease or "healthy" group to search for biomarkers, a biological measure of mental health symptoms. This search for biomarkers has been elusive. This multi-site research study -- which included 179 participants recruited at CAMH in Toronto, Zucker Hillside Hospital in New York and the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Baltimore -- calls that paradigm into question because people with the same mental illness may not show the same biological patterns.
The study, which involved participants completing a facial imitation task while undergoing functional MRI brain scans, found three "activation profiles," says first author Dr. Colin Hawco, also of CAMH. These can be described as typical, over-activated and de-activated profiles.
People with schizophrenia experience emotion differently from others, 'body maps' show -- ScienceDaily
The outcomes differed radically between groups, with the control group showing distinct maps of sensations for 13 different emotions, indicating specific patterns of increased arousal and decreased energy across the body for each emotion. However, in individuals with schizophrenia, there was an overall reduction of bodily sensation across all emotions.
The study also found that individuals with schizophrenia don't differentiate on their body maps for varying emotions. That may pose a problem for them in identifying, recognizing and verbalizing their emotions or trying to understand the emotions of others.
Torregrossa said the research will allow the team to move forward in developing ways to help people with schizophrenia process emotions, which, in turn, could improve interpersonal relationships.
"The main outcome of this research is that we have a better understanding of why people with schizophrenia might have trouble interacting with others," she said. "What we can do now is help them learn to attend to physiological sensations arising from their bodies and use them to process emotions."
Resynchronizing Neurons to Erase Schizophrenia - Neuroscience News
he Geneva neuroscientists chose to focus on neural networks of the hippocampus, a brain structure notably involved in memory. They studied a mouse model that reproduces the genetic alteration of DiGeorge syndrome as well as some behavioural changes associated with schizophrenia. In the hippocampus of a control mouse, the thousands of neurons that make up the network coordinate according to a very precise sequence of activity, which is dynamic in time and synchronized. However, in the neural networks of their mouse models, the scientists observed something completely different: the neurons showed the same level of activity as in control animals, but without any coordination, as if these cells were incapable of communicating properly with each other. “The organization and synchronization of neural networks is achieved through the intervention of subpopulations of inhibitory neurons, including parvalbumin neurons,» says Carleton. “However, in this animal model of schizophrenia, these neurons are much less active. Without proper inhibition to control and structure the electrical activity of other neurons in the network, anarchy rules. ”
Beef jerky and other processed meats associated with manic episodes -- ScienceDaily
A study of their records between 2007 and 2017 showed that, unexpectedly, among people who had been hospitalized for mania, a history of eating cured meat before hospitalization were approximately 3.5 times higher than the group of people without a psychiatric disorder. Cured meats were not associated with a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder in people not hospitalized for mania or in major depressive disorder. No other foods about which participants were queried had a significant association with any of the disorders, or with mania.
"We looked at a number of different dietary exposures and cured meat really stood out," says Yolken. "It wasn't just that people with mania have an abnormal diet."
Mobile Health App Effective for Serious Mental Illness
The FOCUS system includes daily self-assessment prompts and on-demand functions that can be accessed anytime. Self-management content targets five broad domains: voices, which involves coping with auditory hallucinations via cognitive restructuring, distraction, and guided hypothesis testing; mood, which involves managing depression and anxiety with behavioral activation, relaxation techniques, and supportive content; sleep, which involves sleep hygiene, relaxation, and health and wellness psychoeducation; social functioning, which involves cognitive restructuring of persecutory ideation, anger management, activity scheduling, and skills training; and medication, which involves behavioral tailoring and receiving reminders.
Treatable Immune System Disorder Could Be Mistaken For Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder - Neuroscience News
The study was inspired by the 2007 discovery of anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a disease that causes symptoms similar to schizophrenia or bipolar disorder but can be treated with existing immunotherapy medications.
“We suspect that a significant number of people believed to have schizophrenia or bipolar disorder actually have an immune system disorder that affects the brain’s receptors,” said Joseph Masdeu, M.D., Ph.D., the study’s principal investigator and a neurologist with the Houston Methodist Neurological Institute. “If true, those people have diseases that are completely reversible – they just need a proper diagnosis and treatment to help them return to normal lives.”
Teaching skills
In 1959, she was offered an internship in the psychiatric unit at Manhattan State Hospital, where she tended to forty schizophrenic women. They were guinea pigs, she wrote in her memoir, enrolled in an experiment to test the efficacy of new medications and LSD. Her job was to administer these experiments and complete the research logs, but instead, she taught the women independent living skills. They learned to comb their hair, dress themselves, and arrive to appointments on time. She took them on field trips and helped them find jobs and their own apartments.
Attention deficit disorders could stem from impaired brain coordination: Researchers uncover link absent between brain regions in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia -- ScienceDaily
When the researchers attached probes to the mice to measure brain activity, they found mice without ErbB4 had brain regions that were acting independently, rather than together in synchrony. In particular, the researchers studied the prefrontal cortex -- normally associated with decision-making -- and the hippocampus -- a region that supports memory. These two regions coordinate for a variety of brain tasks, including memory and attention. "We found top-down attention, previously thought to be controlled by the prefrontal cortex, also involves the hippocampus in a manner where the two regions are highly synchronized when attention is high," says Mei. "Our findings give importance to synchrony between the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus in top-down attention and open up the possibility that attention deficit disorders, like ADHD, might involve impairments in the synchrony between these two regions."
According to the new study, ErbB4 coordinates a cascade of brain signals that "bridge" the two regions. ErbB4 itself encodes a receptor found on the surface of brain cells. The study found that when a protein (neuregulin-1) attaches to the ErbB4 receptor, it triggers a chain reaction that ultimately determines neurotransmitter levels in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. Without ErbB4, neurotransmitter levels go awry. The researchers discovered mice lacking ErbB4 have low levels of a particular neurotransmitter -- GABA, or gamma-aminobutyric acid -- in their brain. Low GABA levels can lead to impaired top-down attention in the prefrontal cortex, and impairs how the prefrontal cortex can efficiently coordinate with the hippocampus. The researchers concluded that ErbB4 helps link the two brain regions to maintain attention.
Understanding the Relationship Between Amphetamines and Psychosis | SpringerLink
Most people with psychosis, who use stimulants, also use cannabis, and cannabis is the most commonly used illicit drug among first-episode schizophrenia cases [40, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50]. A recent review of stimulant-use disorders in people with psychosis found that cannabis use was the variable that most strongly correlated with stimulant use [51•]. Cannabis and methamphetamine have been suggested as the two most important drugs involved in the pathogenesis of psychosis and schizophrenia [34]. As the effect of cannabis, to a certain extent, counters that of amphetamines, users often take it to end amphetamine binges. Studies on psychosis in users of amphetamines seldom report on concurrent cannabis use. Given that cannabis often accompanies the use of amphetamines, it is uncertain to what extent the effect of cannabis might have influenced the evidence on the association between amphetamines and psychosis.
PsycNET Record Display - PsycNET
amphetamine psychosis can, in some cases, almost exactly replicate endogenous schizophrenia.
Stanford researcher: Hallucinatory 'voices' shaped by local culture
The striking difference was that while many of the African and Indian subjects registered predominantly positive experiences with their voices, not one American did. Rather, the U.S. subjects were more likely to report experiences as violent and hateful – and evidence of a sick condition.
The Americans experienced voices as bombardment and as symptoms of a brain disease caused by genes or trauma.
One participant described the voices as “like torturing people, to take their eye out with a fork, or cut someone’s head and drink their blood, really nasty stuff.” Other Americans (five of them) even spoke of their voices as a call to battle or war – “‘the warfare of everyone just yelling.'”
Moreover, the Americans mostly did not report that they knew who spoke to them and they seemed to have less personal relationships with their voices, according to Luhrmann.
Among the Indians in Chennai, more than half (11) heard voices of kin or family members commanding them to do tasks. “They talk as if elder people advising younger people,” one subject said. That contrasts to the Americans, only two of whom heard family members. Also, the Indians heard fewer threatening voices than the Americans – several heard the voices as playful, as manifesting spirits or magic, and even as entertaining. Finally, not as many of them described the voices in terms of a medical or psychiatric problem, as all of the Americans did.
Link between hallucinations and dopamine not such a mystery, finds study -- ScienceDaily
"Our brain uses prior experiences to generate sensory expectations that help fill in the gaps when sounds or images are distorted or unclear," said Guillermo Horga, MD, PhD, assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at CUIMC and a research psychiatrist at NYSPI. "In individuals with schizophrenia, this process appears to be altered, leading to extreme perceptual distortions, such as hearing voices that are not there. Furthermore, while such hallucinations are often successfully treated by antipsychotic drugs that block the neurotransmitter dopamine in a brain structure known as the striatum, the reason for this has been a mystery since this neurotransmitter and brain region are not typically associated with sensory processing."
The researchers designed an experiment that induces an auditory illusion in both healthy participants and participants with schizophrenia. They examined how building up or breaking down sensory expectations can modify the strength of this illusion. They also measured dopamine release before and after administering a drug that stimulates the release of dopamine.
Patients with hallucinations tended to perceive sounds in a way that was more similar to what they had been cued to expect, even when sensory expectations were less reliable and illusions weakened in healthy participants. This tendency to inflexibly hear what was expected was worsened after giving a dopamine-releasing drug, and more pronounced in participants with elevated dopamine release, and more apparent in participants with a smaller dorsal anterior cingulate (a brain region previously shown to track reliability of environmental cues).
The negative side of negativity
In fact, researchers have long documented how certain emotional reactions from family members correlate with higher relapse rates for people who have a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Collectively referred to as “high expressed emotion,” these reactions include criticism, hostility and emotional overinvolvement (like overprotectiveness or constant intrusiveness in the patient’s life). In one study, 67 percent of white American families with a schizophrenic family member were rated as “high EE.” (Among British families, 48 percent were high EE; among Mexican families the figure was 41 percent and for Indian families 23 percent.)
Non medical treatment succeeds in third world
The research showed that patients outside the United States and Europe had significantly lower relapse rates — as much as two-thirds lower in one follow-up study. These findings have been widely discussed and debated in part because of their obvious incongruity: the regions of the world with the most resources to devote to the illness — the best technology, the cutting-edge medicines and the best-financed academic and private-research institutions — had the most troubled and socially marginalized patients.
Trying to unravel this mystery, the anthropologist Juli McGruder from the University of Puget Sound spent years in Zanzibar studying families of schizophrenics. Though the population is predominantly Muslim, Swahili spirit-possession beliefs are still prevalent in the archipelago and commonly evoked to explain the actions of anyone violating social norms — from a sister lashing out at her brother to someone beset by psychotic delusions.
McGruder found that far from being stigmatizing, these beliefs served certain useful functions. The beliefs prescribed a variety of socially accepted interventions and ministrations that kept the ill person bound to the family and kinship group. “Muslim and Swahili spirits are not exorcised in the Christian sense of casting out demons,” McGruder determined. “Rather they are coaxed with food and goods, feted with song and dance. They are placated, settled, reduced in malfeasance.” McGruder saw this approach in many small acts of kindness. She watched family members use saffron paste to write phrases from the Koran on the rims of drinking bowls so the ill person could literally imbibe the holy words. The spirit-possession beliefs had other unexpected benefits. Critically, the story allowed the person with schizophrenia a cleaner bill of health when the illness went into remission. An ill individual enjoying a time of relative mental health could, at least temporarily, retake his or her responsibilities in the kinship group. Since the illness was seen as the work of outside forces, it was understood as an affliction for the sufferer but not as an identity.
The concept of schizophrenia is coming to an end – here's why
I expect to see the end of the concept of schizophrenia soon … the syndrome is already beginning to breakdown, for example, into those cases caused by copy number [genetic] variations, drug abuse, social adversity, etc. Presumably this process will accelerate, and the term schizophrenia will be confined to history, like “dropsy”.
