Study links hallucinations in Schizophrenia to brain structure differences

Zee Media Bureau/Shruti Saxena

New Delhi: A new study suggests that there is a difference between the length of a brain fold found in the frontal lobe for people diagnosed with schizophrenia who have hallucinations as compared to those who don’t.

Hallucinations refer to the tendency to see, feel, smell and taste things that are not actually there.

Researchers led by Dr Jon Simons, a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, UK have found that the brain wrinkle, called the paracingulate sulcus (PCS), which is responsible for brain development before birth, of schizophrenia patients have structural differences as compared to healthy individuals.

The study's first author, Jane Garrison, was quoted saying to a news website, “We think that the PCS is involved in brain networks that help us recognise information that has been generated ourselves”.

“People with a shorter PCS seem less able to distinguish the origin of such information, and appear more likely to experience it as having been generated externally,” she explained.

The study was published in the journal in Nature Communications.