Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder marked by changes in behavior and hallucinations. Hallucination is a sensory experience without external stimulation to the special senses organs, resulting in real sensation as if it really happens, and the subject have no control over it and the subject is conscious and not asleep. Schizophrenic patient can experience hallucinations in all five special senses auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory. The most common is auditory hallucinations.
Verbal auditory hallucination is one of the most typical symptoms of schizophrenia, with the prevalence between 50-80%. Auditory hallucination is commonly found in paranoid schizophrenia. There are 21 million schizophrenia patients around the world, and in Indonesia 1,7 in every 1000 citizens have schizophrenia.
The newest study from Department of Psychiatry FMUI-RSCM shows that auditory hallucinations on schizophrenia patients is related to increased abnormal activity in the standard mode network of the brain. The brain’s standard mode is a network activated in resting condition, spontaneous condition, or when the brain is not doing a task. The hypothesis is schizophrenia patient hallucination is related to abnormal connectivity in the brain zone connected to auditory, language, and memory stimulus processing.
Khamelia, SpKJ, a staff from Department of Psychiatry FMUI-RSCM, and her team studied that hypothesis by stimulating an electromagnetic wave using transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) 1 Hz in the area between left media and temporal lobe, and then comparing it with EEG result before and after stimulation.
The data was then examined the connection with verbal hallucination and subjects ability to know the voice source. The subject consist of four groups of schizophrenia patients, schizophrenia without hallucination, schizophrenia with hallucination, patients sibling, and health subjects. In schizophrenic subjects, hallucination severity was examined and other subjects was given a task to monitor voice sources on the computer screen. The result shows that schizophrenic patients with hallucination shows significant increased activity in the brain area that plays a role in auditory sensory processing, attention, and memory.
The result was presented by dr. Khamelia, SpKJ at her doctoral hearing on Thursday, June 27th 2019 in IMERI Auditorium. The dissertation is titled “Spatiotemporal Psychopathology Study: Abnormal Activity of The Resting Brain on Verbal Auditory Hallucination in Schizophrenia Patient”.
The head examiner was dr. Nurhadi, Ibrahim, PhD, and other examiner consist of Prof. Dr. dr. Jenny Bashiruddin, SpTHT-KL(K); Dr. Drs. Heri Wibowo, M.Biomed; Prasandya Astagiri Yusuf, S.Si, MT, PhD; and Prof. Dr. dr. Tuti Wahmurti Arie Sapiie, SpKJ(K) from Padjajaran University.
At the end of the hearing, Prof. Dr. dr. Ari Fahrial Syam, SpPD-KGEH, MMB, inaugurated dr. Khamelia, SpKJ as a Doctor of Biomedical Science of FMUI. On their closing remarks, promotor, Prof. dr. Mohamad Sadikin, DSc and co-promotor Dr. dr. Nurmiati Amir, SpKJ(K) and Prof. Dr. Ir. Raldi Artono Kostoer, DEA, wished this study can be a new approach to treat psychiatry disease.
(Public Relations FKUI)