Our brain spends its time trying to communicate with us. This little voice that we hear in our head is actually the same phenomenon as when we speak out loud, according to a study published by the journal eLife. Findings that could help explain certain pathologies such as schizophrenia.
Read a book, decide on the next lunch, imagine your next meeting… With each of these thoughts, we appeal to our inner voice. According to one study published in the journal eLife, we even spend a quarter of our waking time listening to it.
Scientists have therefore looked into this question: how is the brain able to tell the difference between our inner voice and the one we use to talk to others? This is the answer that could help doctors treat pathologies where the patient “hears voices”, such as schizophrenia, for example.
The brain sends copies of efference
According to Inserm, 600,000 people have schizophrenia in France, and the disease most often occurs between the ages of 15 and 25. This pathology disturbs the thoughts, emotions, perceptions and behaviors of patients. And the hallucinations that are part of the symptoms of this disease are believed to be due to a problem with the patient’s inner voice.
Explanations. When we speak out loud, our brain sends instructions to our vocal cords, tongue, and lips to tell them how to move and make sound. At this point, the brain produces a copy of these instructions, called “efference copies”. These copies allow regions of the brain to anticipate the information they are going to receive. If the information sent matches the sound that comes out of our mouth, then the process is under control.
“We all hear voices in our heads”
During their research, the scientists noticed that a certain type of response sent by the brain is like “attenuated” when the inner voice is similar to the outer one. However, when the two voices are different, this “attenuation” does not take place and the response sent by the brain is then much greater.
So this would mean that the brain also produces an “efference copy” for the inner voice, as it does for the outer voice. For the researchers, this would indicate that the method they used could be used to understand the mechanisms of the brain when it hears voices.
For Professor Thomas Whitford, one of the study’s authors and professor in the School of Psychology at the Australian University of New South Wales, “we all hear voices in our heads. Perhaps the problem arises when the brain becomes incapable of telling us that we are the ones producing the voices we hear. “
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