Posted by blueboy on June 9, 2008, at 7:32:03
In reply to Re: Intrusive music in my head » blueboy, posted by Tomatheus on June 6, 2008, at 18:48:53
> Blueboy,
>
> Thank you for your reply. It is helpful to read your descriptions of the intrusive music and visualizations that you've experienced, and how these phenomena differ from full-blown hallucinations.
>
> I guess I tend to associate intrusive thoughts and intrusive music with psychosis because I've been experiencing these phenomena since my psychotic break but never experienced them before I became psychotic. As part of my psychotic illness (schizoaffective disorder), I have experienced phenomena similar to what you've described *and* more full-blown hallucinations such as hearing sounds in the room that aren't really there and seeing objects that look dramatically different from how they normally look.
>
> I'm not suggesting that you necessarily have schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or another psychotic illness.I don't. In fact, a long time ago when I took psychedelic drugs like LSD a few times, I never got hallucinations. Maybe there is a part of my brain that actually works right, LOL.
> Even though I would describe intrusive music as being a type of a hallucination . . .
I'm guessing there's a particular little place, somewhere in the brain (that they'll discover in about 50 years if civilization doesn't fall to pieces before then), that is responsible for reporting whether perception originates externally or internally.
There has to be another spot that lets a "normal" person start and stop internal sensory phenomena. I can sit here and visualize an apple, then stop, or I can imagine a tune, then stop. I'm fairly sure that the stopping part can be difficult even for the healthy brain -- remember the old joke, "I'll give you a dollar if you can not think about a giant pink elephant for ten seconds". Most people can't do it.
This must also have something to do with the function that reminds us. I'm remembering, right now, my doctor's appointment at 11.00 today. My mechanism functions well enough that I'm sure I'll remember, because I've instructed that part of my brain that it is important.
But then there's that Proustian phenomenon of involuntary association. I'll see or hear or smell something that will somehow bring back a flood of memories from a long, long time ago. I hear an old song and suddenly I vividly remember the smell of the perfume my girlfriend in the eighth grade wore. So getting a tune stuck in your head might be some sort of malfunction where the involuntary memory gets stuck in a loop.
Okay, enough rambling about my addlebrained theories. My point is that there must be a specific mechanism that lets the non-psychotic mind distinguish between external and internal phenomena. It must be fairly high up in the brain, since most people when they go to sleep will experience dreams as "real", i.e. external. And I'm guessing that the switch is normally triggered by sensory input -- when the alarm clock goes off, we stop dreaming.
I don't know a lot about schizophrenia, but the movie "A Beautiful Mind" indicated that Nash eventually became able to distinguish between hallucinations and reality by using his intellect. He would still see and hear an imaginary person talking to him, but he would be able to realize at the cognitive level that it was an hallucination!
poster:blueboy
thread:830967
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080606/msgs/833727.html