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.
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.
The study’s findings were published in the academic journal Brain.
Oh please this study ignores the difference between aural and visual dominate subjects making the results not only suspect but a deduction that is inductive on its own and just plain ignorant.
Experiencing auditory hallucinations is NOT an indicator of a healthy mind.
Then i suppose that optical illusions is the sign of bad eye sight?
False premises used.
Your example is based on a true experience (the real illusion is meant to trick the mind).
Auditory hallucinations are based on a false experience (never happened).
They are not the same.
No a sign your brain has been tricked into believing something that is fake.
BS.. articles and studies like this do little but speculate on, minimize or trivialize the TRAUMA AND EXPENSE millions of families face when dealing with Bipolar, Schizoaffective, Schizophrenia. In fact a majority of “scientific studies” are done to GRAB research dollars but then RARELY REPRODUCED to validate past findings.
Joan of Arc heard voices and it didn’t turn out well.
But what if my well tuned brain is telling me to clean my guns and double check my ‘list’?
Sooo, Pelosi is ok, then?
The voices keep telling me, the voices the voices (watching Nancy twitching all over)
No, in her case it’s pathological.
thats what the voices told me too … 🙂
The voice in my head says: “This study, just like the vast majority so called studies, is basically useless made up garbage that can’t be duplicated, isn’t peer reviewed and that its only actual propose is to get a paycheck from whomever was dumb enough to fund it, likely at taxpayer expense.”
They’ll publish anything that either removes the burden of the government to support people, aka patients, or create a new sub sect of people, aka patients, that keep shrinks employed.
The conclusions of the researchers are non-sense. Hearing voices is NOT the result of a sound mind.
I suspect some, if not all, of the researchers are hearing voices themselves.
Murmuring voices in the machines. If only I could make out what they’re saying. ;-P
I hear voices, but they speak Spanish, so I don’t know what they are telling me.
Hearing voices just means your ears are working, or if nobody’s in the room you no doubt are a libocrap.
So you’re not crazy, you’re special…yep, makes sense 🙂
Yeah, short bus special!
or, You’re especially crazy…
U.S. Democrats have convinced themselves that they hear Russians right around every corner.
However, contrary to the study findings, their brains are anything but well-tuned.
See Hillary Clinton, Maxine Waters, Chuck Schumer et al.
Let’s not forget Hank “Guam is going to flip over” Johnson
“…it might tip ovah, and cap-size.” ~ Rep. Hank Johnson, Democrat Georgia
You are my hero.
Means you are demonically oppressed. Somewhere in your life, you have opened a spiritual doorway to demonic entities. The ONLY true cure is to turn back to God/Jesus and ask Him to protect you. Or take the drugs and mask reality.
Oh crap… now you’ve invented another victim group…
Okay, I don’t have credentials to support my statement so I’ll just wonder digitally.. What about the people in dead silence hearing voices? Are they well-tuned? Especially those voices telling them to kill someone or something. This study sounds bogus.
This article is dumb click bait. Of course they were hearing voices, as there was speech in the audio they played. Try telling me that people who hear voices in their daily life, absent disguised speech, are perfectly healthy. I guess “Study: The Ability To Hear Disguised Speech May Just Mean You Have A Well-Tuned Brain”
Of course NO ONE would read the article unless you trick them to.
When I’m in the shower I sometimes hear voices. Once or twice it was so bad I peaked my head out of the bathroom, still dripping, trying to locate the voices, knowing my husband was not supposed to be home yet and both of my daughter’s were napping . I think it has to do with the running water, the a.c., and probably the acoustics of my house.
It’s probably that creepy guy who lives next door with his parents.
Absolutely loving the picture to go with this article. They should have just written the caption as “A Well-Tuned Brain.”
the agenda here is to collect information……and to normalize POSSESSION FROM DEMONS…..and to confuse the evil and the good