Aberrant salience is thought to also contribute to another defining feature of the disease, namely the hallucinations. Most people have an internal voice in our heads, narrating events, reminding us of things, intruding with unrelated thoughts. Have a random burst of dopamine along with one of those, and it becomes marked with so much salience, so much presence, that you perceive it, respond to it as an actual voice. Most schizophrenic hallucinations are auditory, reflecting how much of our thinking is verbal. And as a truly remarkable exception that proves the rule, there have been reports of
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