Considering the entire history of medicine, schizophrenia, which is expressed in its most basic form with significant changes in perception, thought, behavior and mood, has not been detected by a single person who was born blind, and these results have surprised and excited scientists.
Although the researchers could not reach a definite point on this subject as 100%; Let’s take a closer look at the hypotheses that distinguish congenitally blind people with schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that can be diagnosed in 0.3% to 0.7% of people.
A person diagnosed with schizophrenia predominantly suffers from hallucinations, disorganized speech, lack of motivation, and difficulty thinking. Although the symptoms of this disorder, which can be seen more predominantly in men than in women and can be seen at an early age, can be reduced to some extent with various treatments, it does not promise a definite result in terms of its complete elimination.
Schizophrenia, which dominates the person’s brain, is a condition in which the decision-making mechanism of the brain is disabled in its most comprehensive form. It leads to the disconnection of the brain specifically in the areas of perception and interpretation, and the person cannot distinguish between the real and the unreal.
As much as the mystery of what causes schizophrenia is tried to be solved, it is a matter of curiosity how congenitally blind people do not get this disease.
Although research has continued since the middle of the last century, a large-scale study carried out in this sense has reached definitive findings that people with congenital visual impairment cannot have schizophrenia.
The researchers analyzed data from 467,945 children born in Western Australia between 1980 and 2001, and 1870 were diagnosed with schizophrenia, but none of the 66 children found to be congenitally blind were diagnosed with schizophrenia.
In light of these surprising findings, scientists have agreed to conduct much more comprehensive studies of how schizophrenia really works.
Schizophrenia invites quite a few problems with the brain’s ability to model things in the environment and predict what will happen, the researchers say. At this point, it is estimated that the functioning of the inner world balances of congenitally visually impaired people is much different.
So, what kind of protection does being blind from birth provide against schizophrenia?
Although scientists are not 100% sure about this, according to a hypothesis, being born blind leads to positive developments in sound perception, attention and memory, contrary to expectations, in schizophrenia cases where some brain functions are abnormal.
In short, people born with visual impairment have much more developed senses, and this situation is tangential to schizophrenia.
There is another hypothesis about why this disorder, which dominates the brain, is not seen in people who are blind.
On the other hand, scientists state that as one of the most basic reasons that can be predicted, people who are blind from birth cannot develop hallucinations because they do not have knowledge about the world around them, and they are not likely to meet schizophrenia in this way.
On the contrary, people who can see for a part of their life but later go blind are more likely to develop schizophrenia than normal people.
Research continues to determine what protects congenitally visually impaired people from schizophrenia, and schizophrenia in general may become a thing of the past if the factor that visually impaired people have, which we do not have, can be clearly identified.
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