When the brain's typical wiring patterns shift from the norm, it leads to psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

In a new study, researchers have identified 'brainquakes' that disrupt the brain's connectivity in people who live with these conditions and experience debilitating psychosis.

By mapping out the role these brainquakes play, the research team hopes to get a better understanding of common brain disorders and perhaps a step closer to treatment interventions that can help manage them.

Essentially, these brainquakes are an imbalance between the redundancy and synergy of brain networks, whereby brain cell circuits process either shared or complementary information, respectively. Redundancy makes the brain more robust, while synergy allows it to extract more information from related inputs.

The brains of the people with psychotic disorders were noticeably more unbalanced, the researchers found, showing more irregular and random connectivity.