
Schizophrenia study: Digital avatars to represent hallucinatory voices - callumlocke
http://www.mdmag.com/medical-news/avatar-therapy-for-auditory-hallucinations-if-you-cant-beat-the-voices-join-them
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klenwell
This reminds me a lot of what I read about phantom limb pain in V.S.
Ramachandran's book Phantoms in the Brain[0] and the kind of treatment he
helped pioneer for that.

In the book he describes an innovative but quite lo-tech approach using a
cardboard box and cleverly arranged mirrors that enabled patients to visualize
the missing limb and effectively, as I understood it, rewire their brains to
reduce phantom limb pain.

That example does make me wonder how critical the digital component of the
treatment is. The article notes:

> Patients were then encouraged to engage in a dialogue with the avatar, who
> was controlled by a therapist.

I wonder if this would work with similar effectiveness using puppets or actors
or perhaps even mirrors.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantoms_in_the_Brain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantoms_in_the_Brain)

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pygy_
This is indeed exactly the same principle, where you fool the brain into
connecting a buggy representation with a concrete object that can be gradually
modified into something that better fits reality.

Re. digital vs. puppet, that's a good question. I suppose that the closer you
can get to the hallucinations the better the treatment will work. So it may
work with low tech gear, but it will probably be less effective (because it
would be harder to reach the suspension of disbelief that's probably required
for the treatment to work).

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172384723875
It is not really a buggy representation though. Autocorrecting your behaviour
based on other opinions is a huge part of being human. Its a loss function
that we seek to minimise. Whats buggy about it is that you start hearing the
process that results in a loop. Listening to the outside world normally has a
higher priority. Thats how you autocorrect you inner model. But now you are
autocorrecting your inner model based on your inner model. As a result your
theory of mind skills deteriorate.

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theoh
John Nash concluded eventually that his hallucinations were part of a
conversation with himself.

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172384723875
tldr; Was smoking weed for over 10 years, later on started clubbing and mixing
weed with stimulants like Ecstasy and Amphetamines, got a drug induced
psychosis within 5 months. Symptoms: Auditory Hallucinations, Paranoia,
Persecutory delusions - was searching for hidden cameras around me every time
I had an episode.

My two cents on this study - it works because the voices you hear are what you
think others would think of you in this particular situation. Once you start
having a conversation with your voice[s], your expectations (your inner
modelling of others) change.

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zappo2938
A close friend of the family had hallucinatory voices. He thought he could
read minds. He decided to play Texas Holdem poker in the casino to take
advantage of his mind reading inner voices. After a painful period of not
having any money, he figured out that the voices weren't real nor could they
read what the other players were holding in their hands. He is totally normal
now.

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172384723875
Yes, external correction mechanisms are very helpful. Installing little
snitch, monitoring wireshark and checksums helped me a lot :)

~~~
sgtmas2006
Absolutely helps. Separation from a screen for 20~ hours can cause an episode
for me. Left my PC at home to read a book and ended up having a panic attack
and hallucinating a skull out of a blanket. Panicked and left my grandmothers
house at the time. Only about a month and a half ago.

Mostly under control otherwise.

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WovenTales
I want to add two things that aren't directly related to the article, but
which might contribute to further discussion.

First, there's an anthropologist who's found that the stereotypical, combative
voices are only universal (among a small sample) to the American/western
participants in her study.[1] In cultures that offer alternate explanations
for them ("spirits" or such), the voices are much more frequently friendly or
even helpful.

Second, but less rigourous, that "new approach" mentioned in the Stanford
article sounds remarkably like how someone one of my high school teachers knew
handled his own voices: he did have trouble with them for a while and wound up
needing to take a break from the handyman outfit he (if I recall correctly)
ran with his brother. Eventually, though, his therapist recommended he stop
trying to push the voices away completely, and the next time my teacher saw
him, a few years later, he was back working again, and just telling people "if
you hear me talking as I fix your porch, it's not to you."

It's not my own depiction, but I like the idea that part of why the voices
here get so aggressive is that we're dead set on denying their reality -- if
we try to ignore them, they just shout louder until we _can 't_ ignore them.
And, as this article shows, the way we cast someone's voices as controling or,
at the very least, setting the course of their life doesn't do anybody any
favors when that leads so easily to feeling like they're subject to the
voices' whims.

[1] [https://news.stanford.edu/2014/07/16/voices-culture-
luhrmann...](https://news.stanford.edu/2014/07/16/voices-culture-
luhrmann-071614/)

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DataWorker
Another win for talk therapy and important implications for therapeutic
applications of ai. A great business opportunity where a lot of good can be
done. The pharmaceutical market is huge.

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pygy_
You probably meant health care, this will probably shrink the pharmaceutical
market by a non-trivial amount. Hopefully the effects will be long lasting and
therapy won't have to be repeated (or if it does it will be with months if not
years of remissions without treatment).

The people who will benefit from that treatment will probably need to take
less or no anti-psychotics daily.

A great win since these drugs have ugly side effects (obesity in the short
term, and neurological problems after decades).

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DataWorker
My implication was that a lot of money is spent on antipsychotics and if this
non-pharmaceutical approach can be automated it might be able to capture some
of the antipsychotic medication market for very little cost.

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MichailP
This reminds me once again how much of our reality is in the brain. So, if you
"think" you hear voices - you do, if you think the thing you hear are just
your thoughts running wild - you do that and act accordingly. I guess in the
first case you would be terrified (after all you _hear_ voices) and in the
second case you could be amazed (what a cool thing your brain is since it can
imagine voices, "their" thoughts, etc.) How much of the bad things in this
world and in life come from wrong perspective... :(

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tzakrajs
I don't think an abundance of negative, however vivid, intrusive thoughts
could leave anyone in a positive state of amazement. Maybe if they were
positive?

