Average human beings will struggle to determine if this mask is convex or concave. The hollow-mask illusion makes distinguishing the front from the back of a mask harder you would expect. But an article in New Scientist highlights new research which reveals that people diagnosed with schizophrenia are immune to the hollow mask illusion.
In the study, volunteers were monitored in an fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanner as they looked at photos. Some of these were normal pictures of faces, but others had been inverted as in the hollow-mask illusion. All the participants with schizophrenia could distinguish between the two types of photos, whereas control volunteers without the condition were fooled 99 per cent of the time.
People with schizophrenia, which affects about 1 per cent of the population, are already known to be immune to certain visual illusions. Immunity to the hollow-mask illusion, says Danai Dima, of Hannover School of Medicine in Germany, suggests that the "bottom-up" process of collecting incoming visual information from the eyes, and the "top-down" process of interpreting this information is different in people with schizophrenia.
"The term 'schizophrenia' was coined almost a century ago to mean the splitting of different mental domains, but the idea has now shifted more towards connectivity between brain areas," says Dima.
The prevailing theory is that perception comprises three main components: sensory input (bottom-up); the internal production of concepts (top-down); and a control component, which covers interaction between the two first components. "Our study provides further evidence of 'dysconnectivity' between these components in the brains of people with schizophrenia."
While this "disconnectivity" might make it difficult to function on our linear, legalistic social environment, it seems unfortunate that New Scientist hails this research mainly for discovering that the hollow-mask illusion "could provide a diagnostic test for the condition". It certainly proves that those individuals whom we label as "schizophrenics" perceive the world differently, but that knowledge is neither new nor exciting. Why we have damned such modes of perception is a much more interesting question.
Thomas Szasz maintains that describing a behavioral disorder such as schizophrenia as a "disease" is merely a "medical metaphor". In his words:
"If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic."
For Szasz, a different mode of perception might label one an artist, a melancholic, Aspberger's, or schizophrenic. Yet disturbing modes of behavior and thought do not fit the definition of a medical disease. To be a true disease, it should be capable of being found "on the autopsy table and meet pathological definition" rather than being voted into existence by groups like the American Psychiatric Association, who clearly have an interest in discovering as many mental "diseases" as there are stars in the sky. From the wiki entry:
Mental illnesses are "like a" disease, argues Szasz, putting mental illness in a semantic metaphorical language arts category. Psychiatry is a pseudo-science that parodies medicine by using medical sounding words invented over the last 100 years. To be clear, heart break and heart attack belong to two completely different categories. Psychiatrists are but "soul doctors", the successors of priests, who deal with the spiritual "problems in living" that have troubled people forever. Psychiatry, through various Mental Health Acts has become the secular state religion according to Thomas Szasz. It is a social control system, which disguises itself under the claims of scientificity. The notion that biological psychiatry is a real science or a genuine branch of medicine has been challenged by other critics as well, such as Michel Foucault in Madness and Civilization (1961).
So New Scientist is thrilled to announce the discovery of a new, quasi-scientific test that legitimizes the forceful institutionalization and mistreatment of those labelled "schizophrenic" by our culture. Jumping for joy would be too twisted even for my East European dark humor.
For more on schizophrenia, Szasz, and the myth of mental illness:
Szasz's Manifesto
"Liberty and the Practice of Pyschotherapy", an interview with Szasz
"Mental Disorders Are Not Diseases" by Thomas Szasz
"The Case Against Psychiatric Coercion" by Thomas Szasz
Szasz Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility
"Thomas Szasz Takes On His Critics", an interview with Jacob Sullum
