On the Psychopathology of Paranoia
by travis+web@subspacefield.org

Introduction:

I believe paranoia has its roots in three mechanisms that taken together
create a pathological "positive feedback loop":

1) A hyperactive pattern matching process.
2) A reinforcement mechanism that rewards high-emotion conclusions.
3) A hyperactive state of arousal.

Pattern Matching:

To understand the nature of pattern-matching, of detecting a pattern in
the presence of noise or incomplete information, I refer you to signal
detection theory, a branch of psychology [1].  The context in which we
apply this is to consider evaluation of danger to oneself.  If a person
chooses a low criterion, we may describe that person as "suspicious",
or even "paranoid", because he will make more false alarms (also known
as Type I errors).  He may equally regard us as "oblivious" due to our
misidentifying legitimate threats (also known as Type II errors).

One psychologist advised me to handling paranoid individuals in a
straightforward manner, to be clear and concise.  "You will never sneak
anything past a paranoid", she said.  Stated another way, the paranoid
mindset has eliminated Type II errors at the expense of Type I errors.

I have heard that when presented with truly random data, people have a tendency
to ascribe patterns where there are none.  This would suggest a predisposition
to a low criterion.  In many cases, such as evaluation of danger, this would
tend to keep us on the safe side and may be a valuable evolutionary trait.

(TODO: validate this, do some research, get references)

Pattern recognition is of obvious but profound importance in our daily lives.
We perform pattern recognition for a great many tasks.  In some cases, the
subtlety and power of our pattern recognition system is equated with
intelligence.  IQ tests, in my opinion, predominantly measure one's ability
to recognize (generate, evaluate, discard) patterns.  Pattern matching is
also known as inductive logic, which Aristotle defined as "moving from
particulars to universals", in contrast to deductive logic, which moves in
the opposite direction.  Pattern matching is used in social situations as
well, where we observe a person's behavior, mannerisms, and other outward
particulars, and then draw a conclusion about their internal state.  In these
and other contexts, pattern matching may also be known as intuition.

It is my contention that there is a strong correlation between people who are
good at pattern matching and people who enjoy it.  It is fairly clear that
pattern matching may be improved by practice, as evidenced by the tendency for
IQ scores to increase with repeated test-taking.  It is also well-known that
people who keep "mentally busy" tend to retain their mental function longer
into senescence.

(TODO: locate study which shows rise in IQ with test-taking)

My hypothesis is that intelligent, intuitive people, people who are good at
pattern matching, are predisposed towards paranoia.

High-Emotion Reinforcement:

But what is the mechanism behind this?  I believe that a positive
recognition event triggers a small reward release of catecholamines,
probably dopamine and maybe norepinephrine.  We all are familiar with
finally solving a particularly vexing puzzle, and the "Aha!" or
"Eureka!" that accompanies it.  Similarly, imagine the shock if you
suddenly found evidence that your spouse was cheating on you.
I believe that this emotional content reinforces the importance
of the association that led to the positive recognition, and that
it also increases our pattern matching ability by reinforcing
useful pathways.

I further believe that this reinforcing effect occurs around the same time that
the critical association is presented to our conscious mind.  In particular, I
believe that it occurs before we have had a chance to rationally evaluate
whether we have solved the puzzle or not.  For example, consider the reaction
of a detective who finds a clue at the scene of a crime.  He has no objective
way of knowing that this will lead to the criminal or not.  However, he
probably has a moment of euphoria before he tags and bags it.  Many
investigators may follow a piece of evidence too far, thinking that it must
be important.  Similarly, many prosecutors are shocked when a defendant they
are trying comes up with exculpatory evidence.  In some cases, the prosecutor
maintains his position even after the defendant is proven innocent.  They are
apparently in denial about being misled, and often impugn the exculpatory
evidence to prevent cognitive dissonance.

(TODO: Interpret this in light of the James-Lange theory of emotion:
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~lwh/drugs/chap04.htm#James-Lange%20Theory%20of%20Emotion)

What is going on here?  I believe that the reinforcement system does not wait
for confirmation of logic, which may never come.  Imagine a caveman who sees
bear tracks, and hears a growl.  He recognizes this as a dangerous environment,
and flees in the opposite direction.  He never sees the bear.  However, he
believes that it was a bear, and that is all that matters.  A positive
recognition that is consistent with internal beliefs triggers reinforcement.
Next time he sees bear tracks or hears a growl, he will be more likely to
flee.  Also, he will be resistant to suggestions that there was not a bear,
due to cognitive dissonance (nobody likes to be wrong).

How strong is this reinforcement?  I believe that the strongest reinforcement
comes from associations to conclusions that are of high emotional content.
In particular, conclusions that provoke fear, shock, awe, and exhiliration
lead to the strongest feedback.  Coming in second are those that provoke
shame, embarrasment or guilt.  This is consistent with the evolutionary
advantages of survial and social ability.

Hyperactive Arousal:

I believe the release of catecholamines described above puts the body and
brain into a state of arousal.  In particular, epinephrine (adrenaline)
is likely released, leading to the well-known "fight or flight" response.

But what effect does that have on the brain?  My contention is that pattern
matching activity increases.  I also believe that the brain wants to weed
out irrelevant stimuli and focus on the important information.  Specifically,
the pattern matching part of the brain tends to present associations that
lead to life-or-death consequences, and tends to ignore associations that
lead to less important conclusions.

For example, consider the phenomenon of "weapon focus".  This term is used by
police to describe a situation where a person threatened with a weapon tends
to focus their perception on the weapon.  In many cases, the victims can give
a much better description of the weapon than of the perpetrator.  Similarly, in
the instructions for an ultrasonic dog-repelling device, users are instructed
to make jabbing motions at the dog so that the dog can correctly make the
association that the pain is from the device employed by the user.

(TODO: understand the biology of arousal better)

A paranoid person's mind thus tends to be preoccupied with evidence of
persecution.  This could be similar to post-traumatic stress disorder.
In fact a recent article suggests a link between the beta-adrenergic
system, memory, and PTSD (6) (7).

(TODO: summarize that article better and evaluate if this is really the
right place to refer to it)

Neuroatomical Locality:

I believe that pattern matching is performed in the dorsolateral prefrontal
cortex, and that it is correlated to the level of dopamine there.
Additionally, it would seem that deductive logic would be correlated with
left-hemisphere activity, and inductive logic with right-hemisphere activity
(2).  Another study suggests that the medial temporal lobes are responsible
for the "consolidation of memory, and thus, the fixation of declarative
beliefs" (3).

There is indeed a study relating high levels of pattern recognition to dopamine
(4).  In particular, people who tend to believe in paranormal phenomena
appear to act as though they have higher levels of dopamine.  This may also
explain why otherwise intelligent people seem to be easily duped into
believing in UFO phenomenon, crop circles, leprechauns, fairies, divine
miracles, resurrection of the dead, free energy, past lives, chemtrails,
reincarnation, and other unobservable or nonreproducible phenomena.  But I
digress.

Paranoid Schizophrenia:

I believe that in paranoid schizophrenia, paranoia is taken a step further.
In particular, I believe that the auditory hallucinations say things to
deliberately provoke strong emotions.  This makes them particularly hard
to disbelieve, because they "know" exactly what buttons to push to get your
attention, to set off fear and panic, to distract you from skeptical trains
of thought, and to appeal to your ego with delusions of grandeur.

For instance, take the well-known case of John Nash (A Beautiful Mind).
His schizophrenic hallucinations convinced him of two things:

Fear: That communists were going to detonate an atomic bomb on US soil.
Exhiliration: That he was a "natural codebreaker" and could help prevent it.

Consider also the case of friend X, who suffered from amphetamine psychosis
(very similar to paranoid schizophrenia):

Fear: That psychic government spies had been investigating him by joining
their minds to his.
Fear: That the promotion of adderall (amphetamines) was a carefully planned
chemical warfare attack on the population of the US by Germany through its
pharmaceutical companies.
Exhiliration: That they were going to teach him to develop his psychic powers.
Fear: That 78% of the Earth was going to die due to a biological attack.
Exhiliration: That he could help them to stop it, once trained.
Fear: That if he agreed to be trained, he could never change his mind;
the only options were completing the training, or dying.
Fear: That if he told anyone what was going on, that person would die,
perhaps in a "suicide".
Fear: That the bio-terrorists had psychics of their own, and they would find
him unless he learned to "think nothing" for long periods of time.
Fear: That they could not easily forgive him, and that he would have to be
severely punished for this.
Guilt: That he was too paranoid, and psychics needed to appear normal
to maintain their cover.

Consider also the case of friend Y, schizoaffective:

Exhiliration: That aliens were communicating with him.
Fear: That 10% of the people on the earth were going to die, and he was one
of them.

Consider the case of friend Z, also schizoaffective:

Fear: That psychiatrists and ex-friends were using hypnosis and
neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) to control his behavior.
Exhiliration: That he could understand what people were saying, no matter what
language they spoke in.
Fear: That his friends were being hypnotized and under the control of an
ex-roommate, turning them against him.
Exhiliration: That he could use NLP to seduce women.
Fear: That government agents had burgled his apartment.
Exhiliration: That he could get free cable TV by using a magnet to couple
two cable lines together, with one plugged into his a tuner in his computer.
Fear: That the cable company had detected this and used an electronic
countermeasure (ECM) that destroyed part of his computer.
Fear: That someone had tapped his phone line.

There are a few interesting studies which [indirectly] compare beliefs in
paranormal phenomena with schizophrenia (2, 3).  It is probably not a
coincidence that schizophrenic delusions are frequently paranormal in
nature.

It should also be noted that the conventional psychiatric explanation of
schizophrenic auditory hallucinations is excess dopaminergic activity in
the temporal lobes.  Neuroleptics designed to help curb schizophrenic
symptoms are dopamine blockers, and frequently result in anhedonia, which
appears to be based in the temporal lobes as well (3).
Overall, dopamine appears to play a significant part in schizophrenia.
I believe it is the most important neurotransmitter in paranoia as well.

A study on the relation between dopamine and schizophrenia suggests that
high levels of dopaminergic activity in the prefrontal cortex inhibits
subcortical dopamine activity (5).  This explains why schizophrenics present
with both positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia simultaneously.
This is also consistent with the experience of friend X, whose amphetamine
psychosis produced positive symptoms but no negative symptoms (presumably
because it elevated overall dopamine levels).

(NOTE: include information about apophenia)

An interesting incident exposes the level of "faster propogation of spreading
activation of the [schizophrenic's] semantic network structure" (2).  I had
suggested to friend Z that he see a psychologist, who I identified by name.
Almost immediately, he rattled off three or four names that rhymed with her
name, and stated, "yes, that's a good name".  It took me nearly a minute to
think of a single rhyming name; this qualifies as an outstanding glimpse of
what the human mind is capable.

A coincidence worth mentioning is that friend Y and friend Z are both
left-handed, and friend X is somewhat ambidexterous (he started as a
left-hander, but learned to write right-handed).  This is significant
in that left-handedness correlates with right-hemisphere preference.
On a related note, appreciation of metaphors requires right-hemisphere
activity, and both friend Y and friend Z reported that statements sometimes
seemed to convey hidden meanings during their psychotic episodes.

Side Note on Pattern Matching:

Pattern matching can be influenced in several ways.  There are many
experiments which demonstrate this effect (TODO: cite them).

An interesting anecdote from "Body of Secrets" by James Bamford illustrates
this:

``From early intercepts of Cuban diplomatic communications, it was clear that,
far from being involved, Castro's people were as mystified by the
assassination as the rest of the world.  "The assassination of Kennedy," said
one message from Havana to its embassy in Mexico City, "was a provocation
against world peace, perfectly and thoroughly planned by the most reactionary
sectors of the United States." ...
...
Egyptian diplomats speculated that Kennedy was assassinated as a result of his
stand on racial equality. ... "After signing the register which is open in the
American Embassy [in Ankara] on the occasion of the death of Kennedy, I saw
the [American] Ambassador.  He is of the opinion that Russia and Cuba had a
finger in the assassination."
...
In a message transmitted back to the Middle East, a delegation of Palestinians
blamed the assassination on a Jewish plot: "Behind the mysterious crime is a
carefully plotted Zionist conspiracy. ... Likewise, the Italian ambassador to
Syria cabled Rome saying that the government in Damascus saw Zionism behind
the murder.
...
The Argentine ambassador to Budapest reported that the Hungarian people "were
deeply touched," and that the government attributed the killing to "fascist
elements inspired by racial hatred."''

It would appear that events such as these create a kind of Rorshach inkblot,
where preconceived notions contribute significantly in causal ideation.

Bibliography

1. http://white.stanford.edu/~heeger/sdt/sdt.html
   http://wise.cgu.edu/sdt/overview.html

2. "Associative Processing and Paranormal Belief",
   Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences (2001), 55, 595-603

3. "Testing vs Believing Hypotheses: Magical Ideation in the Judgement of
   Contingencies", Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 1997, 2 (4), 251-272

4. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992589

5. "Dopamine in Schizophrenia: a Review and Reconceptualization",
   Am. J. Psychiatry. 1991 Nov; 141(11):1474-86

6. "We can implant false memories"
   http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1098943,00.html

7. "Approaches to the Treatment of PTSD",
   http://www.trauma-pages.com/vanderk.htm