Schizophrenia is caused by Exposure From Visual Subliminal Distraction

Copyright 2003 -  Edit Saturday April 26, 2008 06:04 PM -0500

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This site is about a conflict of human physiology that shaped history but was undetected  until the 1960's.

In the entire history of man on the planet Earth this phenomenon was discovered only once.

It caused mental breaks for office workers.

You will find this material hard to believe.

This phenomenon is explained in first semester psychology lectures where students don't believe it either.

For that reason I wrote a demonstration that will allow you to experience the phenomenon.

The Everquest Connection page has the explanation and assumes you have not taken basic psychology.

The solution for this problem was the office Cubicle.

This site argues that the this phenomenon causes College Suicides and Missing Students.

The phenomenon causes mental events around the world, Chaco Canyon.

If you use computers in unprotected workspace such as homes, dorms, student apartments, and small business offices read  ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.

Long  term exposure can cause severely altered mental states. Qi Gong  Kundalini Yoga

If you are visiting the site as part of a school project send the person responsible for controlling violence at your school to this site.

TopPage

Schizophrenia

This page is a beginning draft/outline of an article on the cause of Schizophrenia.

Support information is linked above.

Last update edit Saturday April 26, 2008 18:04:07 -0500

Read the links section, new information is parked there before integration in the page text.

Important

This site is not about treatment or diagnosis.

If you are having first psychotic breaks or other mental health issues the first recourse should be a complete physical and neurological work up. There are physical problems that create psychiatric symptoms. Some can be successfully treated but are potentially fatal if left untreated. (Stroke from vascular blockages outside the brain, or low cardiac output starving the brain of oxygen, for instance. )

Investigating the problem on this site will not interfere with any treatment you now have. If you use the information and your condition improves your therapist or psychiatrist will claim the credit for that improvement. Why should you care if you improve?  I don't.

Long term exposure victims will not improve quickly. You must also unlearn the behaviors. That is probably why talk therapy actually works. The cited information is that first exposure victims usually recover with no treatment and never have another incident if they do not have further exposure. (ICU Psychosis and other exposure instances show that.)

In the 1800's most mental illness lasted less than a year.

Schizophrenia is a diagnosis in the DSM, nothing more.

Introduction

In the 1960's designers, engineers, and human factors scientists accidentally discovered that a normal feature of everyone's 'physiology of sight' could cause mental breaks. They were modernizing the business office using the first prototypes of close-spaced workstations. The problem was solved and the cubicle was created to deal with this phenomenon.

Today it is treated as a harmless nuisance in the design of crowded offices. The mental event is believed to be a temporary period of confusion and psychotic-like behavior. Most victims quickly recover with no treatment and never have another incident.

It appears that they did not give the problem a name. The phrase Cubicle Level Protection is used to discuss it. A Design student from Australia emailed me for permission to use this site for information in her thesis on Subliminal Distraction. That is the name for this problem outside the United States. The term has a slightly different meaning in psychology here. It usually refers to sounds subliminally perceived in a noisy office when you dissociate slightly to work.

That Design student told me that the information is not in books. So little is thought of the problem that students in Australia are expected to "pick it up" from lectures. Designers and office furniture manufacturers will not discuss it. They change the subject or deny such a problem exists. They seem to think there would be endless law suits if the public were aware of this phenomenon.

Subliminal Distraction

Subliminal Distraction arises in the fact that there are no on/off switches for sensor cells in your eyes and ears. If you concentrate on something to the point of slight dissociation those cells still send neural impulses to the brain over their normal channels if stimulus strikes them. Acoustic subliminal distraction is thought to be a factor in fatigue. Visual subliminal distraction is not recognized here.

My wife had a psychotic mental break in the payroll office of the University of Alabama in 2002. It happened so fast everyone thought she was having small strokes. While an exhaustive neurological investigation was being performed I remembered something from my engineering student days forty years ago. The mental break had happed thirty days after she moved into a new office. I have been stunned to find that something I have known most of my life is unknown in any area of mental health services.

Special Circumstances

The special circumstances that allow exposure from Subliminal Distraction are so simple they can be created almost anywhere, even in primitive societies. The phenomenon has always been present in any human population but would not have begun to cause problems until man began to build and use permanent structures, or make tools.

Hunter-gather roving bands and pre-humans would not have activities that caused them to sit for hours each day, day after day, concentrating while there was repeating detectable movement in peripheral vision. That is required to get enough exposure to cause a problem.

Most primitive housing is too-small single-room in design. That places occupants in close proximity so that when one person concentrates as others move in the small space, they can be detected as threat-movement. In hot dry location sun shades are used for group activities. This happened in 1100/1200 AD when the Anasazi had mass paranoia exhibited by their protective structures. They eventually abandoned large cities for smaller family groups. (See the Chaco Canyon page here.)

Schizophrenia

Most  academic medical sources now agree that Schizophrenia is more than one problem. This site is a historical search that offers examples, available to everyone, showing Schizophrenia is an altered mental state that can be layered on any number of neurological problems.

We are constantly inundated with new discoveries of factors believed to be an explanation of mental illness. Most of the medical papers about these discoveries are unique. There is never a second case.

It never occurs to the writers that something else is at work to cause the mental episode they witnessed. Exposure from Subliminal Distraction is silent, painless, and invisible. The victim is never aware anything is happening.

Any one with competent peripheral vision can be a victim of exposure to visual Subliminal Distraction. Only the fully blind are immune.

Outdoor workers have no behaviors that would create the "special circumstances" that were discovered in the 1960's when the problem was found. But even those outdoor workers can be victims if they have a hobby that creates the situation for exposure. Playing video games or using a computer in a location with repeating detectable movement in peripheral vision does that.

For instance, those with Down's Syndrome still have competent subliminal sight and can form peripheral vision reflexes.

Physical Illness versus Mental Illness

To clarify that opening statement, Schizophrenia is only a diagnosis,  you should first examine the difference between physical illness and mental illness. When you are physically ill your medical doctor will perform tests, reach a diagnosis, and there will be a definite treatment, medicine, or procedure for that disease. 

When you have mental problems you begin with a medical investigation for simple causes of mental distress, and when those tests are exhausted you will be referred to a psychiatrist or other mental health professional. After a series of interviews, perhaps even a brief confinement for observation, you will be told that your problem meets the definition for one of the current mental disorders in the DSM.

The idea behind the DSM was to standardize mental health diagnosis and treatment. This was done so that a patient in New York with a mental health problem would have the same diagnosis and treatment as someone in California with that same problem. The complaint today is that the DSM is now a catalog for billing of services. Each disorder has a diagnostic code number for that billing.

The problem with the DSM is that the disorders do not actually exist. They are names for groupings of behaviors.

The American Psychiatric Association freely admits they do not know what causes any of the behaviors labeled as mental illness. Doctors will say they do not have to know the cause of a problem to treat the symptoms. The current belief being espoused is that chemical imbalances are the cause of mental illness. There is only a statistical correlation for that theory. There are those with mental illness and no chemical imbalance and those with the imbalance but no mental illness.

There is a new study of the literature used to communicate information to professionals versus the media representation to the public that chemical imbalances are the cause of mental illness. The theory of chemical imbalances is said to be a metaphor to explain mental illness to patients. That's the politically correct explanation for the fact that the chemical imbalance theory has serious problems.

It cannot explain sudden episodes or adolescent onset. Trauma is the latest invention to fill the gaps in theory.

When I asked a neurologist at Emory how chemical imbalances caused Connie's sudden episode he said that chemical imbalances come along later.

If "A" causes "B" then "A" must come before "B" in space and time. Simple isn't it?

This site and Subliminal Distraction:

Method

Once I saw the possibility that subliminal distraction was a major unknown and unevaluated stressor for mental illness, I realized that for that to be true the phenomenon would happen around the world.

The initial search was for mental events and psychotic episodes that were connected to an activity. The activity was then examined to determine if the "special circumstances" for exposure were present.

This site is the product of that five year search.

Everyone has exposure to visual Subliminal Distraction every day. Most of it is harmless. The problem arises when you accidentally create  the "special circumstances" of those office workers from the 60's and have massive exposure in a short time frame.

Seng-Hui Cho the Virginia Tech shooter, created those "special circumstances" when he used the suite common room to study and use his laptop. Months of exposure as roommates walked by ingoing him provided low-level long-term exposure, rather than intense short term exposure. He increased the activity in the month before the shooting. There has been speculation that he was mentally ill. His behavior in classes leading up to the shooting was produced by Subliminal Distraction exposure. (See the Virginia Tech page here.)

Although believed to be a harmless temporary episode of confusion and pseudo-psychotic behavior I argue that there is circumstantial evidence that this office episode is actually a first psychotic episode. That evidence is from the mental problems that arise from Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga.

When you learn what to look for as those special circumstances you immediately see that the act of correctly performing both exercises creates the conditions, special circumstances,  for exposure to Subliminal Distraction.

What are the circumstances for exposure?

Everyone who ever lived had and has Subliminal Sight and Peripheral Vision Reflexes. This normal part of everyone's physiology is used as a warning system that will break your concentration with a startle and vision reflex if something attempts to approach you while you are using deep mental investment, lost in thought, or daydreaming.

In the 1960's an accidental design error revealed a previously unknown problem. The problem is a "conflict of the physiology of sight." That is, while you can ignore the detected movement to be able to maintain concentration in a busy location, you can't turn the system off. When the startle stops the subliminal operation of the system prevents your being aware it is still detecting movement and attempting to force the startle and vision reflex. The detected movement and your brain's efforts to deal with ignoring the reflex is a Subliminal Distraction.

In unprotected business offices sitting at an open desk allows you to subliminally detect others walking close beside you when you concentrate to perform normal business functions. Cubicles block peripheral vision for a concentrating worker thus preventing exposure.

Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga both require eyes-open concentration to correctly perform the exercise. The movement of others exercising in your group provides the detectable movement in peripheral vision.

Those two things, mental investment, or concentration, and repeating detectable movement in peripheral vision are the elements necessary to create the "special circumstances" of the 1960's business offices.

First Psychotic Episodes:

Many sites around the internet warn that too many Qi Gong or Kundalini Yoga exercise sessions in a short time frame will cause mental events. Those sites blame mysterious forces that control and create the universe for the mental events. They agree that reducing the number of sessions or stopping exercises will stop the mental problems. These events are not recognized as first psychotic mental breaks.

Fixed psychotic altered mental states:

The desired outcome from performing these exercises is enlightenment.

In Qi Gong the object is "opening the third eye." For Kundalini Yoga the desired outcome is the "Awakening of Kundalini." For some users there are other outcomes. They begin to believe they have superhuman strength and supernatural powers. Effected Qi Gong masters believe they can throw chee energy from their fingertips to strike others. Yogis may believe they can levitate, dematerialize, walk through solid objects, read and control your thoughts and actions through mental telepathy. This is usually called "psychotic like."

These superhuman powers are seen as desired positive outcomes of performing the exercise correctly. Those with thought processing problems and impossible delusional beliefs are revered as enlightened. They function nearly normally in other aspects of daily life. Some operate businesses and lead large religious or political groups.

Video Example

YouTube video of George Dillman performing what he believes are superhuman powers he achieves by controlling Chee. Total time 8:13.

At time mark 4:03 he claimed telepathic powers, being able to control the actions of people waiting in line at Starbucks.  At time mark 5:30 he begins the demonstration of throwing Chee. Dillman explains the failure of a trial of his powers beginning at time mark, 7:35.

If this video disappears it is part of a National Geographic Channel problem called, "Is It Real." The episode is "Superhuman Powers."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-x4iJM2aU4

The point to be made is that this low-level long-term exposure from Subliminal Distraction is the cause of these altered mental states. Group activities such as Karate practice will cause exposure if group participants dissociate slightly as they perform the karate movements  in unison. The altered mental states resemble Schizophrenia but without the life altering problems.

Dillman has not been diagnosed with mental problems. He is a successful business man who has bizarre beliefs. There have been TV programs that suggest 'less than honest' activities are at the bottom of this. None of those investigations involved Subliminal Distraction.

Although Dillman is not mentally ill, he believes he has these powers in the same way that a paranoid schizophrenic believes others are trying to harm them. It is part of his reality. He is not faking. These altered mental states are part of the "New Theory of Mental Illness" presented on this site. (Those research notes are here.)

But the possibility exists that one of these effected people will create the "special circumstances" in other places and have exposure there. That could add enough exposure to cause a first psychotic mental break.

Where are schizophrenics exposed?

Remember that we all have a normal harmless level of exposure from daily activities. One possible source of exposure is too-close side-by-side seating in classrooms. That seating plan is the same design problem that allowed exposure back in the 1960's business offices. But the situation in classrooms is not the same as in business offices.

Students  do not spend eight hours every day in deep mental investment like knowledge workers. There is no traffic beside the desks of students when they do use mental investment. It is difficult to detect movement if your neighbor is only writing in a notebook.

But the growth spurt of puberty changes that. Larger bodies are easier to detect when arms and hands move in peripheral vision. Each student has a unique experience depending on what behaviors their neighbors have.

That's why Schizophrenia onsets after puberty, in adolescence.

Hutterite colonies have very low incidence of schizophrenia. They intermarry between different colonies thus there is genetic investigation looking for a connection to schizophrenia. But Hutterites stop schooling in the ninth grade before the full effect of increased Subliminal Distraction exposure would be realized.

The Evidence of Classroom Exposure

In the case of Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga the evidence of exposure lies in the sudden psychotic episode. Examination of  the method of performing the two exercises revealed the elements for exposure form Subliminal Distraction.

These sudden mental breaks also happen in ICU Psychosis and in the Large Group Awareness Training Seminar called The Forum from Landmark Education. There have been studies dating back before 1977 attempting to find why this seminar causes mental problems.

Trainers from The Forum believe it's the powerful method of confrontation that breaks down old habits and allows a new beginning. But victims of the mental breaks are just sitting in the audience attending the seminar. They use a lighted room and that replicates a classroom situation.

When you concentrate in a lecture situation to the point that you begin to form mental images from the words of the speaker you are performing directed daydreaming and dissociating slightly. At that level of slight dissociation you engage your subliminal threat-movement detection system. Small movements of those around you can be triggers for a subliminal startle attempt and peripheral vision reflex. You are in a safe location and have automatically ignored the small movements around you to be able to continue concentrating.

This can also be seen in YouTube video of Chinese Christian groups that meet in private homes. Amateur video shows audience members with an unmoving stare following the words of the speaker. At the same time that same video shows small movements of others and even some who get up and walk through the group. If you are not aware of Subliminal Distraction the group episode that follows this sermon would seem to be possession. In fact those participants believe it is possession by the Holy Spirit. They are all acting out their belief of this happing to them as they experience the onset of a minor dissociative break.

The Forum runs ten or more hours each day for three days. It is possible that those who have serious problems had previous Subliminal Distraction exposure and the intense extra exposure pushed them over the threshold for a mental break.

A second possibility is those who have these problems in short term intense exposure have an inherited problem with the M-Channel for vision and that creates the mental break. Dr. L Stephen Miller at the University of Georgia discovered a inherited defect of hyperactivity in the M-Channel for schizophrenics and their disease free first order blood relatives.

There have been several studies of possible genetic connections for schizophrenia that point to the  M-Channel.

(edit in progress  04/26/2008 06:04:07 PM -0500) This page is being revised as time and my physical problems allow. Generally new material is added and this often changes the presentation.  The basic information remains unchanged.

What causes two different outcomes ?

There is no research on this phenomenon. The difference in the two situations is that the exercises have a belief system and thus an instruction set. Those who are exposed randomly have no such instruction set and if the stimulus, the detection of movement, is used by the brain as reinforcement for contemporaneous activity what ever is a problem for the victim is reinforced by operant conditioning.

It is not difficult to imagine that the constant subliminal threat can eventually color thought and reason causing paranoia. Un-attributed fear is another outcome that can be observed in those known to have been exposed. That is one of the outcomes in our own family case. Un-attributed fear is intense fear but without an object of the fear.

These physical outcomes can be seen on many sites about the mental problems from Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga. Although they incorrectly or ignorantly believe miss-handling universal life energy is the cause of the metal events they correctly record the outcomes.

What causes the psychotic mental outcome?

I don't know. That determination is above the level of work for this site. I do have a simple explanation that might point you to your own theory.

Your brain functions by taking neural impulses from sensors, eyes, ears, skin, and evaluating them. Your reality and memory are created by growing new synapses and modifying others. Those are then read as memory. They create your thought process and operate your body's life supporting functions.

When the startle of this phenomenon happens it is so fast that it is not recognized as vision input. But when the stimulus begins to happen over and over it is recognized and your brain attempts to understand and use that input.

The subliminal nature causes problems and your brain creates false connections attempting to use the input. When enough of these exist your brain cannot function and a dissociative mental break happens. If the stimulus stops those incorrect connections dissolve from disuse. You recover with no harm.

Low level long term stimulus slowly reinforces the false connections and memory locations. They become stronger with repeated use. The brain is re-programmed by its own normal function.

If  you don't like that simple explanation and guess, write your own theory.

The Genetic connection

Research by Dr. L Stephen Miller found a common defect in the M-Channel for vision in schizophrenics and their close but disease free relatives. That defect was hyperactivity.  Peripheral vision is black and white vision. Subliminal Sight, a part of peripheral vision detects only movement, Stationary objects in Subliminal Sight areas of vision are invisible. When threats are detected only movement and position are involved. That is the information communicated by the M-Channel. Hyperactivity in this area might be understood as many more incidents of threat detection.

That would cause many more incidents of exposure to Subliminal Distraction for those with this defect.

Other possible connections are inherited personality traits that would cause the person to watch rather than participate in activities. The propensity to daydream is another possibility. There is a study reporting a statistical correlation between students who daydream and those who develop schizophrenia. The slight dissociation engages during daydreaming would allow exposure to Subliminal Distraction if it is done  where there is detectable movement in peripheral vision.

Low Dose and No Medication Treatment

Beginning with Mosher there have been efforts to remove high dose psychotropic medications.

Soteria Berne: an innovative milieu therapeutic approach to acute schizophrenia based on the concept of affect-logic

Luc Ciompi1 and Holger Hoffmann La Cour, Cita , Belmont-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland Sectorized Community Psychiatry Department, Berne University Hospital of Social and Community Psychiatry, Berne, Switzerland

"The observations at Soteria Berne confirm Mosher's claim that, in this specific environment, most acute schizophrenia patients can be as successfully treated as by standard hospital proceedings, but with significantly lower doses of antipsychotics and without higher daily costs. In addition, the Soteria approach seems to offer certain advantages mainly located at the subjective-emotional, familial and social level. How can these findings be explained and usefully integrated into the mainstream psychiatric concepts and practices?"

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1414694

The original study by Mosher, http://www.moshersoteria.com/bola.pdf

The confinement of patients in family type residences removes them from behaviors that would cause Subliminal Distraction exposure.

Edit progress ends here Saturday April 26, 2008

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What you should understand as you read this presentation is that Schizophrenia is preventable with simple precautions to prevent exposure to Subliminal Distraction. The intent here is to tell as many people as possible and allow each person to make their own informed decision about the thesis.

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previous version of this page

parts of this text are to be included in the final edit

Those designers and psychologists thought they had created the problem for the first time. But Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Syndrome had been discovered and evaluated in the  1880's. Now that same strange disorder is found around the world under different names as Culture Bound Syndromes.

 An incident on the Belgian Polar expedition, 1898/99, had caused mental events for the eighteen man crew of the Belgica when it was trapped in polar ice for a year. Dr. Cook blamed isolation and the constant darkness of the polar night. But when the mental problems increased in the spring he then blamed isolation and the constant day and night sunshine.

 "Mad Travelers" had been recorded in France, 1880, to describe the first cases of Dissociative Fugue (Hacking)  . In his book Dr Hacking blamed ecological and sociological niches.  But all the victims were artisans, clerks, and small business operators. One case involved an army barracks living situation,  like the bunkhouse situation in Jumping Frenchmen of Maine and longhouses in Malaysia were Latah is found.

Humans evolved from hunter gather pre-humans. We all have a warning system that will break our concentration if something approaches from behind while we concentrate. We all have the ability to ignore those vision reflexes once we look and determine that the movement is not a danger to us. But we can't turn that system off. And we can't stop seeing anything in our vision field. The narrow slice of our  vision field that detects movement from behind functions subliminally. Stationary objects in Subliminal Peripheral Vision are invisible.

When we learn to ignore vision reflexes the warning event or startle stops. The connection to consciousness is lost. The normal subliminal operation of the system prevents anyone being aware that their subconscious is still being stimulated by the detection of threat movement and the internal brain process to effect a peripheral vision reflex.

Montessori school systems do not use the traditional classroom seating. I am searching for statistics on the prevalence of ADD, ADHD, and Schizophrenia in those schools. The fact that troubled children are sent to Montessori schools blurs any statistical exploration of the phenomenon.

Hutterite Colonies have low levels of Schizophrenia. Investigators are searching for a genetic reason for that. But those religious colonies stop schooling at the ninth grade. Some of them use the Montessori system. School days are shorter due to farming duties in the colony.

The growth spurt at puberty increases body size and that makes movement of larger arms, hands, and torsos easier to detect in peripheral vision. That's why Schizophrenia usually onsets in adolescence. Exposure to visual subliminal distraction spikes after puberty.  See the Schizophrenia paragraphs on the Cause of Psychotic Mental Illness page.

Schizophrenia often begins in grad school students. The long periods of study and research increases the number of hours they can potentially be exposed. This is the connection for intelligence, creativity and mental illness. Persons who are intelligent and/or creative have activities that increase the likelihood that they will be exposed.

ADD has now been diagnosed in adults. But most children stop the behavior as they grow. How can anyone outgrow a mental disorder? They stop the behavior when they no longer sit in classrooms. If they continue to college the same problem will eventually cause other psychiatric symptoms including Schizophrenia.

If the level of exposure increases so that the expected mental break happens to a college student a disappearance or suicide may happen.

There has been speculation for years that the computer is involved in the increase in college suicides. No one could find a connection. The problem isn't the computer it's the workstation where the computer is used. Incorrectly designed and incorrectly located computer workstations replicate the circumstances of the 1960's office workstation problem.

The current beliefs about the cause of mental illness and Schizophrenia depends on statistical correlations.  This is not new. Over and over medical investigators have relied on information that does not prove the case. A high correlation is seen as proof of a theory. Medical treatment and drugs are used based on that high correlation. When the treatments do not work in every case, that fact is ignored. Finally some authority will establish the failure of the treatment and it will fall out of favor.

Statistics are given to establish the probability for Schizophrenia if a close family member also has the disease. But the correlation is only forty percent for a familial connection. Sixty percent of all cases have no such connection Something else is at work. Millions are being spent seeking that genetic connection.

There is a genetic connection but it is inherited physical abilities to detect threat movement in far peripheral vision, Subliminal Peripheral Vision. The shape of the eye, the number of rods packed on the retina in peripheral vision, and the sensitivity of the brain for the detection of threat movement.

Although designers and the psychologists that solved the problem believed they were the first to cause this problem, a search easily determines that it had been happening for a long time. Historically contemporaneous investigators would not have been aware of the phenomenon. That means that little information was intentionally noted that would specifically point to the conflict of physiology. Now we must rely on the accidental observations that point to this problem as the cause of historical events.

This phenomenon and the exposure to visual Subliminal Distraction appear and cause both the medical benefits and psychotic episodes associated with Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga.

Both exercises use eyes-open meditation while performing movements and poses. In Qi Gong this is done to balance Chee within the body. The goal in Kundalini Yoga is to reach a plane of higher existence through the Awakening of Kundalini. 

Although it takes imagination to see it the two exercises are models of the same design problem that caused mental breaks for at-risk office workers before the invention of the Cubicle.

Users believe they are manipulating Universal Life Energy. There are sites and articles that claim the psychotic episodes are caused by demons or by failure to perform the exercise properly. Short periods of intense exposure creates a temporary episode just like the original episodes from the 1960's.

When the exposure is lighter and spread over time altered mental states are created that resemble Schizophrenia. In classrooms ADD and ADHD are early outcomes and Schizophrenia begins usually in adolescence.

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This research found a common trait for Schizophrenia.

Splintered Minds

The article is by Kathleen Cason, research is by L. Stephen Miller.

Unaware of the conflict of physiology the researchers do not make a connection to Subliminal Distraction.
 

"While Miller didn’t compare the behaviors of people in this study directly to those of schizophrenics, the study supports the notion that SPD is part of a continuum of related disorders and that studying people with less severe disorders may shed light on schizophrenia.

But to get a handle on the inherited behaviors, Miller took another tack. He and Jeffrey Bedwell, a doctoral student on his research team, set out to study cognitive deficits in relatives of schizophrenics.

Healthy first-degree relatives have few psychopathologies, are not on any anti-psychotic medication and haven't been hospitalized for a psychiatric condition. Any differences in the relatives are likely to be due to genetics because they are like the controls in most every way except for the fact that they share many genes with someone who has schizophrenia, Bedwell said."

"...impulses flow along two pathways from the retina to a visual-processing center at the back of the brain called V1. From V1, the signal travels along these pathways to other visual centers. One set of “wires” - the magnocellular (M) or “where” pathway - carries information about movement and an object's location. A second set of wiring - the parvocellular (P) or “what” pathway - carries information about shape and color. From the various visual centers, the information travels to higher thinking areas of the brain where it is interpreted.

In schizophrenia, it seems there’s faulty “wiring” somewhere along the visual pathway. Previous research indicates that people with schizophrenia and their relatives have a hyperactive M pathway, which may account for the sensory overload and problems filtering stimuli experienced by schizophrenics.

Using a test called backward masking, Bedwell and Miller confirmed that relatives, like schizophrenics, have a deficit in the M pathway. "
 

Printable version of full text....    http://www.ovpr.uga.edu/researchnews/summer2002/printschizo.htm

If I correctly understand this ...

Because the brains of schizophrenics have a hyperactive M pathway,  schizophrenic prone brains might  mistakenly believe they have received a signal from Subliminal Peripheral Vision when the defect causes additional input in the M pathway. (Peripheral vision is from rods only and is black and white vision.)

Or another way to state this:

The defect makes the field of view for Subliminal Peripheral Vision appear larger for the Schizophrenic brain.

The Schizophrenic brain makes mistakes more often than normal brains in deciding what is threat movement.

M-Channel Links

Early Visual Sensory Deficits as Endophenotypes for Schizophrenia
High-Density Electrical Mapping in Clinically Unaffected First-Degree Relatives
Sherlyn Yeap, MRCPsych; Simon P. Kelly, PhD; Pejman Sehatpour, MD, PhD; Elena Magno, PhD;
Daniel C. Javitt, MD, PhD; Hugh Garavan, PhD; Jogin H. Thakore, MD, PhD; John J. Foxe, PhD Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2006;63:1180-1188

"Our findings demonstrate a deficit in early visual processing in clinically unaffected first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia, providing evidence that this deficit may serve as a genetic marker for this disorder."

http://cogneuro-nki.rfmh.org/Docs/john_pubs/Yeap-Foxe-ArchGenPsychiatry-2006.pdf

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies of Visual Motion Processing in the Human Brain

Stefan Sunaert

"The parallel processing for color/shape and motion is thought to originate in the retina."

SCHIZOPHRENIA: Etiology and Course, Elaine Walker, Lisa Kestler, Annie Bollini, and Karen M. Hochman

http://www.neuro.wustl.edu/bio5663/2004%20articles/deErausquin-review1.pdf

Theories of schizophrenia: a genetic-inflammatory-vascular synthesis

This theory does not explain why it onsets in adolescence,

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2350/6/7#B79

Does the urban environment cause psychosis? JIM VAN OS
Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, South Limburg Mental Health Research Network, EURON, Maastricht University, PO Box 616 (DRT 10), 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands.
 

"The nationwide Swedish study corroborates and adds to earlier evidence that an environmental exposure operates in urban areas to increase the prevalence of at-risk mental states and the incidence of psychotic disorder. The impact of this exposure is substantial, although it may well reflect a joint effect of urban environmental exposure and other (possibly genetic) factors. The role of the wider social environment and its ecological effect on the development in young people of cognitive vulnerabilities for psychosis has been neglected as a possible mechanism. If there are environmental causes for psychosis, urban ecological studies are likely to help provide new insights in the years to come."

 

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/184/4/287

Urbanisation and incidence of psychosis and depression
Follow-up study of 4.4 million women and men in Sweden
KRISTINA SUNDQUIST, MD, PhD, GÖLIN FRANK, MSc and JAN SUNDQUIST, MD, PhD
Family Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
 

"Results With increasing levels of urbanisation the incidence rates of psychosis and depression rose. In the full models, those living in the most densely populated areas (quintile 5) had 68–77% more risk of developing psychosis and12–20% more risk of developing depression than the reference group (quintile 1). ^"

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/bjprcpsych;184/4/293

Schizophrenia Research at the National Institute of Mental Health

"Researchers are just beginning to understand how some of these candidate genes might increase risk. Genes don't code directly for delusions, hallucinations, flat affect and other symptoms. Genes code for proteins. So how might variations in proteins ultimately result in schizophrenia? Researchers are trying to discover the functional consequences of tiny glitches in genes, called polymorphisms, where the chemical sequence varies slightly in the population, resulting in different versions of a gene. The collective effect of even small variations in multiple genes can likely bias the brain toward schizophrenia symptoms through effects on proteins that shape the developing brain, regulate communication between brain cells, and perform other functions yet to be identified".

This document lists current "candidate genes." Those are genes which produce substances that interact with neurotransmitters.

http://www.mentalhealthjournal.com/NIMH%20Schizophrenia.doc

Faulty wiring in the brain may cause early-onset schizophrenia

"Using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to look into the brains of children with schizophrenia, researchers have discovered abnormalities in the white matter of the frontal lobe that disrupt the transmission of signals regulating behavior, according to a study presented today at the 89th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA)."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-12/rson-fwi112403.php

A Neuropsychological Perspective on Vulnerability to Schizophrenia Lessons From High-Risk Studies
Early Clinical Intervention and Prevention in Schizophrenia

December 2003 pps. 115-132 ISBN: 1-59259-729-7

Text of Abstract

"Dateline,. Washington, DC: February 2, 2053. The Secretary of Health and Human Services has announced that scientists have positively identified all of the genes (26 in number) that confer vulnerability to schizophrenia.
March 25, 2053. The Associated Press quotes a report in Nature Genetics that five individuals have been genotyped who possess every one of the 26 schizophrenogenic alleles, but are not suffering from any major mental disorder, as defined by the DSM-X. The report goes on to state that all of these individuals were raised in suburban middle-class homes, received excellent medical care during their lives (including during their mothers' pregnancy), have had relatively stress-free lives, and have loving and supportive families."

This is a copy/paste quote and the fictional date 2053 is correct.  This appears to be a critical article that uses sarcasm to begin the presentation. The link locates Humana press but the text of the article no longer appears, May 3, 2006.

http://neurosci.humanapress.com/ChapterDetail.pasp?isbn=1-59259-729-7&ccode=1-59259-729-7:115&returntoisbn=1-59259-729-7

Indiana University School of Medicine

This is a series of review papers required of first year medical students at Indiana University School of Medicine as part of the Medical Neurobiology course.

http://www.indstate.edu/thcme/anderson/disease.html

SCHIZOPHRENIA Farazad Loghmani (IUSoM)

http://www.indstate.edu/thcme/anderson/FL.html

SCHIZOPHRENIA: A REVIEW Joseph Sizensky (IUSoM)

"Although schizophrenia is usually discussed as if it were a single disease, this diagnostic category can include a variety of disorders that present with somewhat similar behavioral symptoms. Schizophrenia probably comprises a group of disorders with heterogeneous causes and definitely includes patients whose clinical presentations, treatment responses , and courses of illness were varied. ...Seventy percent of schizophrenics become ill between 15 and 35 years, and the illness affects males more than females. Peak onset in males lies between 15 and 24 years and in females between 25 and 35 years. There are slight ethnic differences with a high incidence in the Scandinavian countries and in non-whites."

http://www.indstate.edu/thcme/anderson/JS.html

Genain quadruplets

Born in 1930 all four of the Genain (not true name) quadruplets developed schizophrenia. This is the seminal case for genetically caused schizophrenia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genain_quadruplets

Treatments

Yoga as an add-on treatment in the management of schizophrenia: a randomized controlled trial
Jagadisha Thirthalli , Ganesan Duraiswamy , Shivarama Varambally, Hongasandra Nagendra^, and Bangalore Gangadhar
Annals of General Psychiatry 2006, 5(Suppl 1):S84     doi:10.1186/1744-859X-5-S1-S84  Published 28 February 2006

"Subjects in Yoga group were taught an integrated Yoga programme developed for positive health (Nagarathna and Nagendra, 2004) and those in PE group were taught stretching aerobic physical exercises. Subjects in both groups underwent supervised training in Yoga or PE for three weeks and practised the same at home for one hour everyday for four months."
 

It is not surprising that those using Yoga fared better. If the subjects were successful in reaching an eyes open concentrating mental state while performing Yoga they could subliminally detect movement as they performed the movements. When the brain understands this stimulus as reinforcement of contemporaneous activities operant conditioning can happen. There is circumstantial evidence that the same stimulus causes the altered mental state of schizophrenia.

http://www.annals-general-psychiatry.com/content/5/S1/S84

Nightwalking

"In The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary swordsman of 16th century Japan, implies that he fought his greatest duels with his eyes crossed, and goes into considerable detail about developing and using this strange abitlity."

The method suggested to engage peripheral vision is to suspend an object from the bill of a baseball cap and practice staring at it rather than looking straight ahead as we all normally do.

The site has a page on the physiology of the eye and sight. It describes the normal field of vision.

http://www.navaching.com/hawkeen/nwalk.html#Anchor-The-59125

Institute for Innovative Blind Navigation

Don't let the site name put you off. This site has several pages which explain sight and how the brain deals with two vision systems.

http://www.wayfinding.net/index.htm

This page has the vision material.    http://www.wayfinding.net/vsionsys.htm#four

The Red Myth

Color in Vision

http://stlplaces.com/night_vision.html

University of Missouri

The first paragraph on this page refers to psychological factors effecting pupil dilation.

"Interestingly, the pupil/iris combination also changes in response to psychological factors. One sign of activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is a system important in arousal, fight, and flight, is dilated pupils. For example, sexual interest results in pupil dilation. (This piece of information may come in handy some time.)"

http://web.umr.edu/~psyworld/eye.htm

 University of Utah

John Moran Eye Center --  Anatomy

http://webvision.med.utah.edu/

Kimball's Biology Pages 

A simple explanation of the eye and sight.

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/V/Vision.html

Understanding Human Vision

This site deals with color.

http://www.pitir.com/pentile/Human_Vision.html

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