Schizophrenia news: 'brain wrinkles' cause 20 percent hallucinations in patients, study reveals

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Differences in our brains may explain why some people with schizophrenia suffer from hallucinations.

A study published in Nature Communications found that a brain wrinkle in the front lobes of the brain can cause schizophrenics to hallucinate.

Shorter paracingulate sulcus (PCS) in the particular area is linked to 20 percent increased risk of auditory and visual hallucinations in patients.

"Hallucinations are very complex phenomena that are a hallmark of mental illness and, in different forms, are also quite common across the general population," said author Jane Garrison from England's University of Cambridge, via a university news release. "There is likely to be more than one explanation for why they arise, but this finding seems to help explain why some people experience things that are not actually real."

PCS is one of the last folds in the brain to develop just before a baby is born and everyone is born with different sized structural folds.

If research shows that the difference in brain wrinkles can show who is at most risk for the psychiatric disorder, support and early intervention can be given to help them.

"It's a region that, although it's not fully developed by birth, whether or not it's going to be a particularly prominent fold - or not - is present in the brain at birth," Simons told BBC.

"It might be that if somebody is born with this particular property, a reduction in this brain fold, that might give them a predisposition towards developing something like hallucinations later on in life."

Lead researcher Dr. Jon Simons and his team tested the length of the fold by comparing the brain scans of more than 150 people diagnosed with schizophrenia and a control group of people.

"Schizophrenia is a complex spectrum of conditions that is associated with many differences throughout the brain, so it can be difficult to make specific links between brain areas and the symptoms that are often observed," said Dr. Simons in a news release, as reported by the US News & World Report.

"By comparing brain structure in a large number of people diagnosed with schizophrenia with and without the experience of hallucinations, we have been able to identify a particular brain region that seems to be associated with a key symptom of the disorder."

Nevertheless, the researchers are surprised by their findings but consider it to be important because hallucinations were previously known to be linked to parts of the brain linked to language and perception.