Scientists claim they've discovered where the 'voices' people with schizophrenia hear come from

A breakthrough may have been made that could provide answers to people living with schizophrenia.

Before we get into the study, I'll quickly touch on what schizophrenia actually is.

A team of scientists believe they can explain why some schizophrenic people hear voices (Getty stock)

According to the Cleveland Clinic: "Schizophrenia involves a disconnection from reality, including hallucinations and delusions. It also affects your ability to recognize your symptoms. It’s a severe condition, but it’s treatable."

There isn't a single cause of schizophrenia; it occurs for a variety of different reasons, but the main three are imbalances in chemical signals in your brain, brain development problems that arose before birth, and a loss of connections between different areas of your brain.

So, now we know a little more about the mental health condition, let's get into the new study.

Published as a journal in the PLOS (Public Library of Science) Biology, it was titled 'Impaired motor-to-sensory transformation mediates auditory hallucinations'.

Following extensive research from Chinese scientists Fuyin Yang, Hao Zhu, Xinyi Cao, Hui Li, Xinyu Fang, Lingfang Yu, Siqi Li, Zenan Wu, Chunbo Li, Chen Zhang and Xing Tian, they believe they can explain why schizophrenic people 'hear voices'.

Researchers from New York University's Shanghai campus studied 40 patients with schizophrenia (Getty stock)

What the students of New York University's Shanghai campus discovered is the way the phenomenon occurs isn't all too different to how we hear sounds from outside the body.

The researchers pooled together 40 people living with the condition, and used electroencephalogram monitors on them.

Out of the 40 participants with schizophrenia, half of them could hear voices, while the others didn't - and the monitors helped differentiate their brains.

The study's abstract read in part: "Distinguishing reality from hallucinations requires efficient monitoring of agency. It has been hypothesized that a copy of motor signals, termed efference copy (EC) or corollary discharge (CD), suppresses sensory responses to yield a sense of agency; impairment of the inhibitory function leads to hallucinations.

"However, how can the sole absence of inhibition yield positive symptoms of hallucinations? We hypothesize that selective impairments in functionally distinct signals of CD and EC during motor-to-sensory transformation cause the positive symptoms of hallucinations."

Their findings revealed that two motor functions in the brains of schizophrenic people that heard voices were the reason for them (Getty stock)

During the experiment, researchers discovered that the patients who hear voices didn't engage the 'corollary discharge' signal - which basically silences your inner monologue so that you can hear sounds coming out of your mouth.

When scientists told them to speak out loud, those with audio hallucinations also had a hyperactive response to the motor signal 'efference copy' - which tells coordinates the motor functions in your brain associated with speaking.

The authors added per EurekAlert!: "People who suffer from auditory hallucinations can ‘hear’ sounds without external stimuli.

"A new study suggests that impaired functional connections between motor and auditory systems in the brain mediate the loss of ability to distinguish fancy from reality.”

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