What do the Prophet Isaiah, Socrates and Joan of Arc have in common? If you answered that they all came to a rather nasty end, you were right. Isaiah was (reportedly) sawn in half, Socrates was forced to drink poison and St. Joan was burned at the stake. Each of them, in different ways, had made themselves unpopular with the powers of the day.
But if you answered that they heard mysterious voices in their heads, you were also correct. History records a catalogue of tormented figures who made bizarre claims, wandered in deserts, took to drink or became destitute. Some were revered, others executed, because of this mysterious power.
Even today, when the phenomenon of hallucinations is widely known, some victims still insist the voices they hear are real. The Nobel Prize-winning American mathematician John Nash, who died last year, believed (for a time) that aliens had spoken to him, and that he would become emperor of Antarctica. The words whispered in his head were so compelling, even a man of his intellect was convinced.
Today we associate these symptoms with a mental disorder — schizophrenia — and treat them as such if they become too intrusive. But some new research from the U.S. makes an astonishing claim.
Nash might indeed have been hearing voices, and so quite possibly were Socrates and the others. But the voices they heard might have been their own.
Experiments with some schizophrenics have uncovered a surprising fact. When they claimed to be hearing inner voices, their throat muscles contracted as if they were speaking.
The difference is one of degree. Out-loud speech requires a more forceful use of the vocal cords.
However, all of us, at one time or another, engage in a form of “low-voltage” speaking — our vocal cords vibrate, but in such a diminished manner that bystanders hear nothing. We call it muttering under our breath.
It turns out that at least some schizophrenics are doing just that, when they reported hearing voices.
How was this discovered? Microphones were fitted to the throat area of test subjects. When they reported hearing voices, the mikes picked up the sound of actual speech, though at a very low register. They were in fact talking to themselves.
How could they not know this? Normally, when people speak — either under their breath or out loud — their brain understands what has happened. There is a feedback loop that takes ownership of the act.
But schizophrenics are missing this linkage. When they talk to themselves, their brain hears the words, but fails to recognize the owner.
Instead, it goes looking for an external speaker, and comes up with something like “the devil” or “a spirit” or whatever.
I’m not sure how much ground this research covers. It might apply only to some schizophrenics, or only in certain circumstances.
Interested readers can decide for themselves — there is a good summary in Eliezer Sternberg’s book Neurologic: The Brain’s Hidden Rationale Behind Our Irrational Behaviour.
Whether there are new avenues for treatment is also uncertain. You get no further telling schizophrenics they’re talking to themselves, than by assuring them it’s all a hallucination. Either way, the voices in their heads are still real and cannot be silenced.
On the other hand, it might be possible, through genetic re-engineering perhaps, to close the missing feedback loop. That is surely a hope worth pursuing.
However the future unfolds, though, this account does offer a new insight into one of mankind’s most mysterious and debilitating conditions. Many a hoary superstition falls to ashes if those ancient soothsayers who heard voices were merely talking to themselves.
Perhaps the gift of supernatural contact was, all along, merely a quirky mannerism we all exhibit — muttering under our breath.
