What causes auditory hallucinations in the brain? For example, when you are sleep deprived, it is possible to hear things very clearly as if they were real. For example, voices of people talking, which some people with schizophrenia experience commonly in their daily lives. But of course there is no input from the ears. So what exactly is happening and how is that possible?
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One type of auditory hallucinations, and not sure I am getting the spelling, hypnopompic and hypnogogic hallucinations. The first thing to mention is these are very very common and by themselves are no indication of any mental health issues. The difference between the two is one occurs as you are falling asleep, the other is while waking up and can sometimes also be associated with sleep paralysis. That said, some of these can be quite scary. I had one where I woke up in a hotel (for real) while on vacation as a kid and there was a guy standing at the end of the bed with black sack over his head. It was as real as life, nothing dream like it whatsoever. He was dressed in black, had gloves on and I could actually see the seems of the leather gloves as he was holding one hand up. Just stood there looking at me. Finally made a break for it to my parents room and they come in and nothing was there. Said I had a bad dream. Never have I confused a “dream” with real life, dreams are, well, dreamy. This was me waking up terrified out of my mind that there is a crazy man with a black sack over his head there to do me harm (as far as I can tell). So this is in fact a good example of these types of hallucinations. In my case my hallucination was visible. So what is going on in the brain that you see things not there? In this case you have dreams intruding into your waking state. These don’t last long, at most a minute, the reason being as you become fully biologically awake dreams don’t intrude in your wakened state and the hallucination goes away. Mine lasted maybe 30 seconds but was hard to tell since I was so terrified that I was about to be murdered or something. That to is characteristic of these types of hallucination for whatever reason. Having someone in your room you perceive to do you harm is very common type of these hallucinations and often have common general characteristics between them of which mine fits in.
Now most people have had these kinds of hallucinations. If you are falling asleep and you hear a crashing sound that startles you back to full wakefulness and yet find no cause for it, it it often one of these hallucinations. Or you are dozing off and you hear clear as day a voice say something to you. Could be a voice you know, or just a voice. I have had both of these types over my life, maybe one or two a year and for me, except the masked man, my always happen as I am dozing off. They are very very common and are not linked to mental health issues. And the later ones I described are the same thing. The voice of my mother I sometimes hear as dozing off, yet she lives in another state. What is that voice and what is happening in your brain? Again a dream is intruding into your waking, or partially awake mind. The difference is these don’t feel “dreamy” as you are still mostly awake, so they seem more like real life. Many attribute these to ghost and paranormal stuff. I can understand why but that is not what is happening.
I can’t speak on whether someone who is schizophrenic is experiencing. But I can say, some how an audio event is being “presented” if you will to your conscious mind as something that is being heard, except the part of the brain involved in hearing is having some problem and presents voices or sounds as if you heard them but in this case the ear and the sounds it collects is not responsible for the brain in this case coming up with a signal indicating hearing something.
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