Hearing Voices – Underpinnings of Auditory Hallucinations | Brain Blogger

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"Hearing Voices – Underpinnings of Auditory Hallucinations
September 22, 2009 By Dirk Hanson, MAcloseDirk Hanson, MA Name: Dirk Hanson
Site: http://addiction-dirkh.blogspot.com/

About: Dirk Hanson is a freelance science writer and the author of 'The Chemical Carousel: What Science Tells Us About Beating Addiction.' He is also the author of ''The New Alchemists: Silicon Valley and the Microelectronics Revolution.'' He has worked as a business and technology reporter for numerous magazines and trade publications. He currently edits the Addiction Inbox blog. Share, Save, and Bookmark

In “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind,” Julian Jaynes suggested back in 1976 that schizophrenia — like spirit possession and imaginary playmates — was a vestige of our brain’s bicameral heritage. Jaynes believed that in man’s early history, the left and right hemispheres of the brain did not “talk” to each other. They failed to communicate effectively across the corpus callosum, the bridge from one hemisphere to another. The result was, to Jaynes, obvious: People used to hear voices. Nowadays, most people who hear voices inside their head are diagnosed as schizophrenics."...

The past few years have also seen the development of a radical counter-movement that seeks to normalize the act of hearing voices. The movement is said to have originated in the Netherlands and the U.K. Intervoice, which bills itself as “the international community for hearing voices,” says they have found that many people who hear voices “are not troubled by them or have found their own ways of coping with them outside of psychiatric care.” Those voice hearers who are “overwhelmed by the negative and disempowering aspects of the experience” are often diagnosed as schizophrenics — “a harmful and stigmatizing concept,” in the opinion of Intervoice.

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Working across the world to spread positive and hopeful messages about the experience of hearing voices