Auditory Hallucinations Essay

590 Words2 Pages

Auditory and visual hallucinations have been occuring on and off in Ms.M’s life long before the diagnosis of schizophrenia was being made. The characteristics of the images that she described remain the same (eg. Shadow-like, human figures, moving, etc) throughout the years. However, she said that she has not been hearing voices for 2 years. It seems like the treatments she received neither lessen nor worsen her visual hallucinations but improve her auditory hallucinations. In fact, it remains doubtful regarding to the improvement in her auditory hallucinations because she was still noted talking and laughing to herself prior to this current admission. She might be actually still hearing voices and was trying to converse with the voices. …show more content…

First, irritation of the primary visual cortex and visual association cortices. (Teeple 2009) This eventually makes the visual intergration system of the brain goes haywired. One of the common examples regarding to such irritation is seizure activity, where spontaneous and synchronised impulses are fired.
The second mechanism is regarding to the pathological lesion of the visual system. Literatures highlight deafferentation as one of the common lesions seen in patient with visual hallucination regardless of the etiology. Molecular changes that occur during deafferentation leads to a hypersensitive state of the neurons and subsequently the cortical releases phenomonon. This is suggested to be rather similar to the phantom limb pain experienced by the post-amputation patient. (Burke 2002)
On the other hand, lesion occuring outside the visual system have also been implicated in the role of generating visual hallucinations. One of them is the lesion in the reticular activating system (RAS). Working together with neurohormonal system, RAS acts as a facilitory system which receives and relay informations from the sensory organs to regulate the various state of conciousness . Therefore, any injury or lesion in the brianstem (eg. Peduncular hallucinosis) might be able to lead to visual hallucinations. (Cogan

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