Scientists brought into actuality during Wednesday, that the deception as well as other psychotic symptoms experienced by people accompanying schizophrenia may be caused by a faulty brain switch that blurs their ability to distinguish inner thoughts from objective reality.

In a study published in the journal Neuron, researchers discovered the severity of symptoms such as hearing voices and deceptions was due to a disconnection between two key regions of the brain - the insula and the lateral frontal cortex. The discovery, they expressed could in future lead to the development of better, more targeted treatments for schizophrenia, accompanied by fewer side effects.

Dr Lena Palaniyappan, of Nottingham University's psychiatry department, who co-led the study explained that in our daily life, we constantly switch between our inner, private world as well as the outer, objective world. This switching action is enabled by the connections between the insula and frontal cortex. (But) this switch process appears to be broken apart in patients with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is one of the most common serious psychiatric disorders affecting around one in 100 people worldwide. Scientists are not yet clear what causes it, yet have confidence in the truth it could be a combination of a genetic predisposition to the condition combined with environmental factors.

(AW:SB)