Comments on: Hallucinations of the inner body

By: Tiptoe

Tiptoe — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:36:04 +0000

Cool! I thought I was alone in this. Mine is so creepy that when I am having my teeth cleaned and they are scraping away at the incisors, it hurts deeply and completely in a primal satisfying way. It is as if an itch is finally being scratched.

Years of psych meds have caused me to grind my teeth so I have little enamel left. Hallucinations seem real to me and are most often tactile or with a hyper sense of smell. With my teeth and jaw, they seem to just morph. If anyone remembers the movie “Werewolf of London”, this is a pretty close depiction of how it seems. I know this is bizarre so I keep it to myself. Interesting to think other folks have similar delusions.

By: neurotaylor

neurotaylor — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:18:59 +0000

A really interesting post and paper, thank you!

Can’t help being puzzled though. The abstract states: “The quantitative analysis confirmed that the regional cerebral blood flow values on the right side were significantly larger than those on the left side for most areas of the brain in the patients.”

And yet all these patients have is cenesthopathy? Seems like a huge disconnect between brain and mind features, if so.

By: Kathleen

Kathleen — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 19:57:28 +0000

It’s interesting to me that all the examples have to do with the mouth — I have recurring dreams in which my mouth is full of some kind of pebbly / waxy substance. In a way, they are just anxiety dreams: I have to give a talk, or converse socially at a party or something, and I just can’t. There is always an explanation in the dream (usually that for some reason I decided to chew a huge amount of gum, and now can’t spit it out — whatever the “backstory” in the dream I always berate myself, what was I thinking chewing all the gum before a big public talk etc.).

But anyway — are all the examples (and the one above, from Erik Forbes) oral or are there other variations?

By: Iszie

Iszie — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:34:23 +0000

Erik Forbes, Sir.. might you also experience these sensations in conjunction with any similar thought pattern that you could believe led to it [buying a pack of pistachios, seemingly baseless fears however small ..perhaps when you had freak out seeing a cockroach which then led to your sensory experience simulating as aspect of fear previously experienced but not overcomed in a dream.. etc.]?

I have them, too, and was diagnosed with Psychosis and Schizophrenia in 2007.

By: Iszie

Iszie — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:30:10 +0000

I experience it almost as if like intuition for a normal person but perceived in an [extra?-]sensory experience.

By: Iszie

Iszie — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 11:28:50 +0000

That’s a relief to know my experiences with Psychosis [at least according to some source well enough for someone to refer to with some level of credibility in reason] doesn’t deem me deranged.. well!

By: Erik Forbes

Erik Forbes — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 01:36:43 +0000

This has a name!?

I sometimes feel the sensation that large bony appendages are coming out of my throat / mouth… This was the source of many horrifying nightmares as I’m sure you can imagine – but I’ve felt it while awake as well, many times.

And occasionally I’ll feel as though my lower jaw were *way* larger than it really is… What’s up with that?

By: Jennifer R. Ewing

Jennifer R. Ewing — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 13:01:08 +0000

I don’t necessarily believe that the universal cause for eating disorders is a visual processing impairment. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it holds true for at least some people who have an eating disorder.

By: nancylebovitz

nancylebovitz — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 12:56:25 +0000

I’ve heard that isn’t necessarily true– at least some anorexics know they’re thin, but their attention keeps going to whatever flesh they’ve got, and they’re convinced that even a little flesh is revoltingly fat.

This might be like something I’ve noticed in dreams, where it’s obvious to me that something is wonderful or terrible or has a backstory– except that what’s actually going on (as far as I can tell) is that my mind has hung a tag on a dream element.

By: Jennifer R. Ewing

Jennifer R. Ewing — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 12:51:13 +0000

I’ve actually heard the “sensory derangement” theory applied to anorexia and bulimia. Which is to say, the sufferer isn’t “crazy” for thinking that, at 5’9″ and 80 lbs, they’re “grossly obese”, it’s actually some sort of visual processing impairment. When they look at themselves in the mirror, they don’t actually see someone who’s skin and bones. It’s like looking in a funhouse mirror–they literally “see” (in their mind’s eye, at least) someone who is grossly obese, and that’s why they keep starving themselves and/or throwing up after every meal.