If you start to hear voices, don't worry. That's the sound of a well-organized brain say researchers from Durham, England. Many folks will hear voices at night as they lie their head down to go to bed. While others hear voices throughout the day, but these episodes are sporadic and fleeting. It is not a sign of a mental illness. In fact, "it’s a clue that a person’s brain is simply well-tuned to many sounds."
DURHAM, England — Hearing voices may not be a
sign of mental illness as much as it’s a clue that a person’s brain is simply
well-tuned to many sounds. A new study finds that healthy people who hear
voices have differently-wired brains that find speech patterns in other sounds.
Researchers from
Durham University studied brain-response differences between two groups of
people — those who have experienced hearing voices (auditory verbal
hallucinations) and those who have never mistaken other sounds for
speech. Participants in the study included 17 people with typical
responses to sounds and 12 people who have experienced hearing voices, but do
not have any mental health problems.
Can hearing voices be a good thing? A
new study finds that people who are not mentally ill, but often hear speech in
sounds may actually have a special skill that comes from having a
differently-wired brain than the rest of us.
Participants
underwent an MRI brain scan while listening to hidden speech sounds, known
as sine-wave speech. Sine-wave speech to the untrained ear
would sound something like birdsong or alien-type noises. Typically,
people are able to make out these sounds only after they have been clued in to
listen for them or taught to decode the hidden speech sounds. After people are
trained, though, they can detect simple sentences within the sounds, such as
“The clown had a funny face.”
Researchers found
that less than half of those with typical listening skills noticed the hidden
speech while 75 percent of the voice-hearers picked it up.
“It suggests that
the brains of people who hear voices are particularly tuned to meaning in
sounds,” says lead author Dr. Ben Alderson-Day in a university release.
Researchers were
surprised that the voice-hearers had such strong neural responses to the sounds
with hidden speech. Even before being told to listen for hidden speech,
voice-hearers reported hearing the voices in the sounds. They found speech-like
sounds faster and more easily than those who have never experienced the
phenomenon of hearing voices.
“We did not tell
the participants that the ambiguous sounds could contain speech before they were
scanned, or ask them to try to understand the sounds. Nonetheless, these
participants showed distinct neural responses to sounds containing disguised
speech, as compared to sounds that were meaningless,” adds co-author Dr.
Cesar Lima.
The authors believe
this shows that the brains of voice-hearers are more perceptive to the hidden
meanings in sounds. The areas of the brain that control attention were quickly
activated in the brains of voice-hearers when they were exposed to hidden
speech compared to when they were listening to vague sounds.
“These findings are
a demonstration of what we can learn from people who hear voices that are not
distressing or problematic,” says Alderson-Day.
Between 5 and 15
percent of the population has occasionally had the experience of hearing
voices. Although not everyone who hears voices has a mental health problem, it
is commonly associated with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
Researchers hope
their findings could someday help scientists and clinicians find better ways to
help those who are troubled by the voices
they hear.
