Schizophrenia Bulletin
August 8, 2018
T. M. Luhrmann, Ben Alderson-Day, Vaughan Bell et al.
74 citations
Trauma can contribute to voice-hearing but is not necessary for it. This article uses ethnographic and other data to show multiple pathways to voice-hearing in both clinical and nonclinical populations, excluding known causes like drugs or epilepsy. Trauma sometimes plays a major role, sometimes a minor role, and sometimes no role at all. Distinct phenomenological patterns in voice-hearing may reflect different salience of trauma for those who hear voices.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
June 19, 2020
Ben Alderson-Day, Angela Woods, Peter Moseley et al.
59 citations
Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) often become personified, but little is known about how this happens. In interviews with 40 early psychosis service users, 40% reported complex personification of their voices. Personified voices were more likely to be experienced as conversational and companionable, but not as commanding or trauma-related. The duration of voice-hearing or age at onset did not predict personification. The findings suggest that personification is linked to the social affordances of voices—their capacity for conversation and companionship—rather than their threatening or commanding qualities.
Psychological Medicine
June 1, 2023
Ben Alderson-Day, Peter Moseley, Kaja Mitrenga et al.
19 citations
Felt presence—the sense that someone else is nearby when no one is there—occurs across neurology, bereavement, psychosis, hypnagogic states, solo sports, and spiritual experiences, but systematic comparisons are rare. Three online surveys compared felt presence in people with psychosis or voice-hearing (75 participants), spiritualist believers (47 participants), and endurance/solo athletes (84 participants). Hierarchical linear regression showed that a general tendency toward hallucinations predicted felt presence frequency in all groups; paranoia and female gender were additional predictors in the psychosis sample. Qualitative analysis revealed shared features, especially immersive states, across contexts. The findings support a unitary model of felt presence, suggesting common underlying mechanisms.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
September 1, 2022
Peter Moseley, Adam Powell, Angela Woods et al.
15 citations
Voice-hearing in people with psychosis and in nonclinical spiritualist communities shows important similarities and differences. Nonclinical voice-hearers report less distress and more control over their voices, consistent with prior findings. They also often integrate multiple sensory modalities into a single entity, experience high levels of associated visual imagery, and perceive voices in locations that differ in relation to perceptual boundaries. Most nonclinical voice-hearers reported hearing voices before encountering spiritualism, indicating that onset was not solely due to deliberate practice. The study suggests that understanding how spiritual voice-hearers cultivate and control voices after onset may inform interventions for distressing voices in psychosis.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
October 1, 2025
Bryony Sheaves, Vanessa Cropley, Peter Moseley et al.
5 citations
Sleep dysfunction and hallucinatory experiences are bidirectionally related, with the strongest path leading from poor sleep to hallucinations. This narrative review examines mechanisms across four levels: phenomenology, psychology, neural networks, and neurophysiology. Stress is a well-supported mediator, with sleep manipulation studies in non-clinical populations showing its role. Sleep loss also affects nervous system inflammation, altering brain connectivity involved in hallucinations. Lived-experience accounts reveal three novel mechanisms—source monitoring, mental resilience, and reasoning skills—that are impacted by sleep loss, though the full causal chain requires further testing. Priorities include testing stress as a mediator in clinical populations and experimentally examining these novel mediators.
Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany)
September 29, 2025
Wei Lin Toh, Sophie Richards, Charles Fernyhough et al.
4 citations
Hearing voices is well studied in psychosis, but unusual perceptions in other senses and in other mental health conditions are often overlooked. This narrative review examined voices and altered perceptual experiences across psychotic, mood, and anxiety disorders. Key findings include: these experiences vary widely within individuals and across diagnoses, often involving multiple senses; existing research focuses mainly on trauma and brain processes as causes; current theories mostly address only voices; new treatments need to be broader; and there are major issues with how these experiences are defined and how they differ across cultures. The review calls for better assessment tools and more consistent research methods, and emphasizes including patients' own perspectives and cultural context.
October 8, 2021
Ben Alderson-Day, Peter Moseley, Kaja Mitrenga et al.
2 citations
preprint
Felt presence—the sense that someone else is nearby when no one is there—is common in neurology, bereavement, and spiritual contexts, but rarely studied systematically across different groups. A mixed-methods analysis of three online surveys compared felt presence in a general population sample including people with psychosis and voice-hearing (75 participants), people with spiritual beliefs (47 participants), and endurance/solo practitioners (84 participants). Frequency of felt presence was predicted by a general tendency to hallucinate in all groups; paranoia and female gender also predicted it in the psychosis-inclusive sample. Qualitative analysis revealed both shared and distinct features of the experience across groups, with immersive states playing a role. The findings support a unitary model of felt presence.
Schizophrenia
November 26, 2025
Ben Alderson-Day, Peter Moseley, Angela Woods et al.
Felt presence—the sensation that someone else is nearby despite no sensory evidence—has been recognized in psychosis for over a century but has been difficult to study. Recently it has been identified across multiple diagnoses and emphasized by people with psychosis as a clinical priority. This work describes how felt presence appears in a first-episode psychosis sample and reports initial links to affect, gender, and psychopathology.
Schizophr Bull
February 1, 2023
Tanya M Luhrmann, Ben Alderson-Day, Ann Chen et al.
In communities where hearing voices is common and expected, people are taught cultural models to identify and explain voice-like events. These communities share common features: they teach discernment to accurately identify the legitimate voice of a spirit or being, and they use two methods to enable experiencing spirits—trained attention to inner experience and repeated speech to the invisible other. The ability to hear spirits becomes more skilled with practice, and what is heard becomes clearer over time. Despite shared cultural ideas, individual variation in experience exists, some possibly reflecting psychotic process. Voice-like events may be shaped by cognitive expectation, trained practice, and an experiential pathway.