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8 APRIL 2021
When you try to hear someone talking in a noisy crowd, your brain helps out by filling in what you missed, based on expectations built from past experiences.
Our brains can sometimes get it hilariously wrong, but generally this system is pretty good at keeping you up to speed. Now, it looks like this system might also be involved in hallucinations.
A new study has suggested hallucinations arise when our brains start believing this system of expectations over - rather than just in support of - what our senses are telling us. While this can happen occasionally to anyone, at their extremes, hallucinations are symptoms of serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
Mice experiencing hallucination-like events provide clues to understand psychosis
The humble lab mouse has provided invaluable clues to understanding diseases ranging from cancer to diabetes to COVID-19. But when it comes to psychiatric conditions, the lab mouse has been sidelined, its rodent mind considered too different from that of humans to provide much insight into mental illness.
A new study, however, shows there are important links between human and mouse minds in how they function -; and malfunction. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis devised a rigorous approach to study how hallucinations are produced in the brain, providing a promising entry point to the development of much-needed new therapies for schizophrenia.
J. Kuhl
A computer game that induces mice to experience hallucination-like events could be a key to understanding the neurobiological roots of psychosis, according to a study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The humble lab mouse has provided invaluable clues to understanding diseases ranging from cancer to diabetes to COVID-19. But when it comes to psychiatric conditions, the lab mouse has been sidelined, its rodent mind considered too different from that of humans to provide much insight into mental illness.
A new study, however, shows there are important links between human and mouse minds in how they function and malfunction. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis devised a rigorous approach to study how hallucinations are produced in the brain, providing a promising entry point to the development of much-needed new therapies for schizophrenia.