For whatever it is worth this is an ongoing attempt to understand an illness most people know very little about:
Professor Tim Crow's theory suggests that schizophrenia is the price we pay for language and I wonder if the exposure to stimulus (non-verbal) - stimulus (verbal) contingencies (classical conditioning) when you with a short delay are able to restore a verbal message or interpret what subjectively seems to be a verbal message can have such a profound effect that some people develop a mental illness.
Quote:"...classical conditioning is far more subtle and relevant to complex human cognitive-emotional behavior than one might first realize..." (p. 4) Source: The Imbalanced Brain: From Normal Behavior To Schizophrenia (2000) by Stephen Grossberg
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Approximately one percent of the world's population (almost 70 million people) are at some point in their lives just like me right now (several voices are commenting on what I write and think) forced to somehow cope with what they experience due to what can best be described as an integration disorder which depend on both environmental and genetic factors.
The alien voices I often hear in response to non-verbal environmental sounds such as traffic noise or the pitch and timbre of a distorted maybe distant voice "retain certain acoustic features that were present in the original signal" and are no doubt just like when I hear and with awareness control my inner voice verbal thoughts heard out loud. (One of the most influential cognitive models of auditory verbal hallucinations acknowledge the fact that people are able to hear their own thoughts as alien voices, but...)
Some people who hear their own thoughts as alien voices in response to non-verbal environmental sounds are definitely just like me able to generate the perception of an external voice "that retain certain acoustic features that were present in the original signal" and what if each and every one of us are able to use covert speech to generate the perception of an external voice "that retain certain acoustic features that were present in the original signal" when we need to restore and better distinguish a verbal message?
Quote: "In schizophrenia, functional hallucinations are defined as those that occur when a patient simultaneously receives a real stimulus in the perceptual field concerned (e.g., hallucinated voices heard simultaneously with—and specific to—the real sound of running water)... ...Another hallucinated voice occurred simultaneously with actual speech uttered by television announcers. The semantic content was the same as that of the "engine voice," but the "television voice" sounded human, exactly like the real voice of the television announcer who was speaking at the same time... ...In this patient, we observed a direct relationship between the timbre, prosody, and pitch of real environmental sounds and simultaneously perceived auditory hallucinations... ...This case suggests a further hypothesis: normal activation in the auditory system, which corresponds to neural encoding of natural-sound object and location characteristics, may be misinterpreted, leading to the false perception of functional auditory hallucinations that retain certain acoustic features that were present in the original signal..." Source: Letter to the Editor, Characteristics of Functional Auditory Hallucinations by Michael D. Hunter, M.R.C.Psych., and Peter W.R. Woodruff, Ph.D., M.R.C.P., M.R.c.Psych. Sheffield, U.K. Am J Psychiatry 161:923, May 2004
From normal behavior to schizophrenia:
To frequently reward a behavior which generates the exposure to stimulus (non-verbal) - stimulus (verbal) contingencies when you with a short delay are able to restore a verbal message or interpret what subjectively seems to be a verbal message can establish or maintain a tendency to interpret what people normally ignore!
Any signal that consistently precedes a meal, such as a clock indicating that it is time for dinner or an appetizer, may cause us to feel hungrier than before the signal because we learn to expect a meal in response to CS and non-verbal environmental sounds that consistently precedes a verbal illusion (information) can like any signal that consistently precedes a meal become a conditioned reinforcer that can activate a drive representation D. What you learn to expect in response to a signal that consistently precedes a reinforcer can motivate an operant behavior which has been established and fine tuned because it satisfies the need to access what you learn to expect...
What can increase the exposure to stimulus (non-verbal) - stimulus (verbal) contingencies like these?
What will make it necessary to restore a verbal message (the exposure to noise and some hearing impairments), what will increase the exposure to more ambiguous voices (some urban environments), what may increase the need to access a verbal message (sensory deprivation, traumatic events, solitude or whatever gives you the sense of not belonging in a social context) and what will diminish our ability to generate an act of will with which we are able to consciously control covert speech with regards to a certain goal (sleep deprivation and stress can impair our ability to inhibit a verbal response and this may generate the event we call perception in response to more ambiguous stimuli).
Can the exposure to stimulus (non-verbal) - stimulus (verbal) contingencies (classical conditioning) like these have such a profound effect that some people develop a mental illness?
"Non-clinical populations usually experience voices with a neutral or even positive emotional content" while those who are diagnosed with schizophrenia more often experience voices expressed with a negative emotional content!
I have tried to understand why some people do rather well while others are diagnosed with a mental illness in the light of the assumption that people who experience voices expressed with a neutral or even positive emotional content are trying to hear the voice they are about to produce while those who experience voices expressed with a negative emotional content are trying to avoid the voice they are about to produce by paying more attention to what they are able to hear more objectively.
People who consistently avoid the event they fear will continue to expect a fearfull event (phobia) and people who selectively are able to avoid some of the voices they hear by revealing a mismatch will continue to expect to hear the voices they were able to avoid! (A verbal illusion can be revealed when an increase in attention (incentive motivational signals) takes the sound you interpret out of its peripheral existence without generating a match between a top-down sensory expectation and bottom-up sensory signals!)...
The road to recovery:
The occurrences of a conditioned response (CR - when a conditioned reinforcer triggers the need to access a sensory consequence) will eventually decrease or disappear if a conditioned reinforcer (a previously neutral stimulus) due to the ability to reveal a mismatch no longer is paired with a primary reinforcer (information brought to awareness when the event we call perception is generated in response to a previously neutral stimulus), but only in people who frequently are able to reveal a mismatch while they are trying to attend the sensory consequence they are about to produce!...