In the United States, the voices are harsher, and in Africa and India, more benign, said Tanya Luhrmann, a Stanford professor of anthropology and the first author of the article in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2014.⁠ ⁠ According to Luhrmann, the experience of hearing voices is complex and varies from person to person. The new research suggests that voice-hearing experiences are influenced by one’s particular social and cultural environment – and this may have consequences for treatment.⁠ ⁠ In an interview, Luhrmann said that American clinicians “sometimes treat the voices heard by people with psychosis as if they are the uninteresting neurological byproducts of disease, which should be ignored. Our work found that people with serious psychotic disorders have different voice-hearing experiences in different cultures. That suggests that how people pay attention to their voices alters what they hear them say. That may have clinical implications.”⁠ ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ ⁠ #brainfacts #sciencef...