Have you ever experienced a nightmare, became conscious, but were unable to move your body? This is a phenomenon known as isolated sleep paralysis that an estimated 5% to 40% of the general population experiences at one point or another throughout their lifetime. During this condition, you may feel extreme fear, notice the fight-or-flight response, …
Most people have heard of the neurotransmitter dopamine and understand that it’s release is associated with feelings of pleasure and reward. Dopamine functions as a neurotransmitter that plays a major role in reward and motivation behavior. Most rewards such as: food, sex, drugs, etc. are all capable of increasing the level of dopamine in the …
Undifferentiated schizophrenia is characterized by general symptoms of schizophrenia that do not fit a specific classification or diagnosis of another subtype. People may exhibit the traditional “positive” and “negative” symptoms, but they may fluctuate over a period of time. This type of schizophrenia can be particularly challenging to diagnose with confidence because someone needs to …
Residual schizophrenia is one of the 5 types of schizophrenia that is characterized by a long-term history of negative symptoms (i.e. psychomotor slowing), with very infrequent or rare occurrences of positive symptoms. To meet the criteria for diagnosis, the person must have experienced positive symptoms (e.g. hallucinations/delusions/etc.) at some point. With that said, the person …
Paranoid schizophrenia is one of the 5 main subtypes of schizophrenia characterized by an intense paranoia which is often accompanied by delusions and hallucinations. Most people with paranoid schizophrenia have auditory hallucinations (i.e. they hear voices) and may experience delusions that people are “plotting” against them. For example, someone with this illness may believe that …
Schizophrenia is a devastating mental illness that affects approximately 1% of the adult population in the United States. There are many symptoms of the illness, but a split dichotomy of what are called “positive” symptoms and “negative” symptoms. Positive symptoms are like adding something to the person’s experience such as hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, etc. In …
Does Ecstasy (MDMA) make you hallucinate? Although not everyone is going to “trip” or experience hallucinations while on Ecstasy, it is certainly a possibility. Any synthetic drug that has as powerful of an impact on the brain as does Ecstasy could make you hallucinate. Hallucinations typically occur in two different forms including: auditory (hearing things) …