There has been an interesting psychological study done in Finland. Researchers were able to distinguish psychosis patients from normal individuals based on their responses to the Disney movie Alice in Wonderland:
Using a 3-Tesla MRI device, they scanned the brains of 46 first-episode psychotic patients (meaning that they had only had one psychotic event) and 32 healthy controls, while watching the movie. The researchers found that significant differences could be seen in the precuneus region of the brain, which is an area associated with memory, visuospatial awareness, self-awareness, and aspects of consciousness.
Asked by the ECNP, lead researcher, Eva Rikandi (Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland) said:
‘In this work, we attempted to determine whether a person is a first-episode psychosis patient or a healthy control subject just by looking at their brain activity recorded during movie viewing. We found, that by monitoring activity in a region known as the precuneus we were able to distinguish patients from control subjects especially well. This would mean that the precuneus, a central hub for the integration of self- and episodic-memory-related information, plays an important role in this kind of information processing of psychotic patients.
She continued:
We were able to achieve almost 80% classification accuracy using these methods. This is the first study which directly associates the beginnings of psychosis with the precuneus, so it is now important that much more research is done in this area’. The researchers hope that this approach can feed into earlier screening and better diagnosis of at-risk populations.
It’s early days for this study, of course. It’s got to be repeatable (keep in mind the high rate of unrepeatability in psychological studies that has been found). It’s a relatively small sample.
I note that another researcher had exactly the same response to the study that I did. I wonder whether people respond the same way to exaggerated fantasy (like Alice in Wonderland) that they do to other sorts of movies?
