Schizophrenia
November 26, 2025
Ben Alderson-Day, Peter Moseley, Angela Woods et al.
Felt presence (FP) - sensing another person without clear sensory evidence - has been described in psychosis for over a century but rarely studied due to challenges in recognition and assessment. Recently FP has been identified as a transdiagnostic phenomenon and highlighted by people with lived experience of psychosis as a clinical priority. Here we describe FP presentation in a first-episode...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
October 6, 2025
Charles Fernyhough, Janna De Boer, Paige E Davis et al.
3 citations
Hallucinations figure prominently in a range of psychiatric disorders but, to date, their developmental origins are not well understood. The aim of the present article is to explore how ideas from mainstream developmental psychology can enhance understanding of how hallucinations develop in different modalities across the lifecourse. Hallucinations vary in their clinical significance depending...
Schizophrenia
September 29, 2025
Wei Lin Toh, Sophie Richards, Charles Fernyhough et al.
4 citations
While voice-hearing in psychosis has received much attention, perceptual experiences in other sensory modalities and psychiatric conditions have remained relatively overlooked. The present review aimed to address this gap by providing an overview of voices/altered perceptual experiences (APE) across psychotic, mood and anxiety disorders in terms of phenomenological characteristics,...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
December 2023
Charles Fernyhough, Anna M Borghi
Many people report a form of internal language known as inner speech (IS). This review examines recent growth of research interest in the phenomenon, which has broadly supported a theoretical model in which IS is a functional language process that can confer benefits for cognition in a range of domains. A key insight to have emerged in recent years is that IS is an embodied experience...
Psychological Medicine
June 1, 2023
Ben Alderson-Day, Peter Moseley, Kaja Mitrenga et al.
19 citations
Experiences of felt presence (FP) are well documented in neurology, neuropsychology and bereavement research, but systematic research in relation to psychopathology is limited. FP is a feature of sensorimotor disruption in psychosis, hypnagogic experiences, solo pursuits and spiritual encounters, but research comparing these phenomena remains rare. A comparative approach to the phenomenology of...
MFS: Modern Fiction Studies
December 1, 2022
M. Bernini, Charles Fernyhough
Abstract:This essay promotes the idea that current cognitive models of mind wandering and inner speech can help us better understanding the phenomenological constituents of what Joyce calls “the mystery of the conscious” as simulated by modernist literary investigations. In our essay, we rework a model of perceptual decoupling (how attention disengages from perception) and peripheral awareness...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
September 1, 2022
Peter Moseley, Adam Powell, Angela Woods et al.
15 citations
Voice-hearing in clinical and nonclinical groups has previously been compared using standardized assessments of psychotic experiences. Findings from several studies suggest that nonclinical voice-hearing is distinguished by reduced distress and increased control. However, symptom-rating scales developed for clinical populations may be limited in their ability to elucidate subtle aspects of...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
February 1, 2022
Ben Alderson-Day, Jamie Moffatt, César F. Lima et al.
Abstract Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs)—or hearing voices—occur in clinical and non-clinical populations, but their mechanisms remain unclear. Predictive processing models of psychosis have proposed that hallucinations arise from an over-weighting of prior expectations in perception. It is unknown, however, whether this reflects (i) a sensitivity to explicit modulation of prior knowledge...
October 8, 2021
Ben Alderson-Day, Peter Moseley, Kaja Mitrenga et al.
2 citations
preprint
Experiences of felt presence (FP) are well documented in neurology, neuropsychology, and bereavement research, but systematic research in psychiatry is limited. Reports of FP are a feature of body disruption in psychosis, hypnagogic and hypnopompic experiences, solo pursuits, and spiritual encounters, yet systematic research comparing these phenomena is rare. Here we present a mixed-methods...
Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy
September 25, 2020
Guy Dodgson, Ben Alderson-Day, David Smailes et al.
Abstract Background: Cognitive behavioural therapy for psychosis (CBTp) is a recommended treatment for psychotic experiences, but its effectiveness has been questioned. One way of addressing this may be to tailor therapy materials to the phenomenology of specific psychotic experiences. Aim: In this study, we investigated the acceptability of a novel treatment manual for subtypes of...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
June 19, 2020
Ben Alderson-Day, Angela Woods, Peter Moseley et al.
59 citations
Recent therapeutic approaches to auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) exploit the person-like qualities of voices. Little is known, however, about how, why, and when AVH become personified. We aimed to investigate personification in individuals' early voice-hearing experiences. We invited Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) service users aged 16-65 to participate in a semistructured interview...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
December 6, 2018
Charles Fernyhough, Ben Alderson-Day, Russell T. Hurlburt et al.
Research into resting-state cognition has often struggled with the challenge of assessing inner experience in the resting state. We employed Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES), a method aimed at generating detailed and high-fidelity descriptions of experience, to investigate how experience in the resting state can vary between internal, external, and multiple simultaneous streams. Using a...
Consciousness and Cognition
October 2018
Peter Moseley, Ben Alderson-Day, Sukhbinder Kumar et al.
Musical hallucinations (MH) account for a significant proportion of auditory hallucinations, but there is a relative lack of research into their phenomenology. In contrast, much research has focused on other forms of internally generated musical experience, such as earworms (involuntary and repetitive inner music), showing that they can vary in perceived control, repetitiveness, and in their...
postmedieval
June 1, 2017
Corinne J. Saunders, Charles Fernyhough
This article draws on research from the major collaborative research project Hearing the Voice, based at Durham University, to reconsider and foreground Margery Kempe's inner voices, and hence, to return to an emphasis on inner, spiritual experience as shaping her Book. The richness of Margery's multi-sensory experience, and the care with which it is depicted, is illuminated by and illuminates...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
November 21, 2016
Flavie Waters, Charles Fernyhough
Hallucinations constitute one of the 5 symptom domains of psychotic disorders in DSM-5, suggesting diagnostic significance for that group of disorders. Although specific featural properties of hallucinations (negative voices, talking in the third person, and location in external space) are no longer highlighted in DSM, there is likely a residual assumption that hallucinations in schizophrenia...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
June 8, 2016
Ben Alderson-Day, Kelly Diederen, Charles Fernyhough et al.
134 citations
In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the potential for alterations to the brain's resting-state networks (RSNs) to explain various kinds of psychopathology. RSNs provide an intriguing new explanatory framework for hallucinations, which can occur in different modalities and population groups, but which remain poorly understood. This collaboration from the International...
Psychological Bulletin
May 25, 2015
Ben Alderson-Day, Charles Fernyhough
Inner speech—also known as covert speech or verbal thinking—has been implicated in theories of cognitive development, speech monitoring, executive function, and psychopathology. Despite a growing body of knowledge on its phenomenology, development, and function, approaches to the scientific study of inner speech have remained diffuse and largely unintegrated. This review examines prominent...
The Lancet Psychiatry
March 31, 2015
Angela Woods, Nev Jones, Ben Alderson-Day et al.
Background: Auditory hallucinations--or voices--are a common feature of many psychiatric disorders and are also experienced by individuals with no psychiatric history. Understanding of the variation in subjective experiences of hallucination is central to psychiatry, yet systematic empirical research on the phenomenology of auditory hallucinations remains scarce. We aimed to record a detailed...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
July 2014
Renaud Jardri, Agna A. Bartels‐Velthuis, Martin Debbané et al.
Typically reported as vivid, multisensory experiences which may spontaneously resolve, hallucinations are present at high rates during childhood. The risk of associated psychopathology is a major cause of concern. On the one hand, the risk of developing further delusional ideation has been shown to be reduced by better theory of mind skills. On the other hand, ideas of reference, passivity...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
July 2014
Louise C Johns, Kristiina Kompus, Melissa Connell et al.
Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) are complex experiences that occur in the context of various clinical disorders. AVH also occur in individuals from the general population who have no identifiable psychiatric or neurological diagnoses. This article reviews research on AVH in nonclinical individuals and provides a cross-disciplinary view of the clinical relevance of these experiences in...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
July 2014
Charles Fernyhough, Flavie Waters
This Special Supplement presents reports from 11 working groups of the interdisciplinary International Consortium on Hallucination Research meeting in Durham, UK, September 2013. Topics include psychological therapies for auditory hallucinations, culture and hallucinations, hallucinations in children and adolescents, visual hallucinations, interdisciplinary approaches to the phenomenology of...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
July 2014
Angela Woods, Nev Jones, Marco Bernini et al.
Despite the recent proliferation of scientific, clinical, and narrative accounts of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs), the phenomenology of voice hearing remains opaque and undertheorized. In this article, we outline an interdisciplinary approach to understanding hallucinatory experiences which seeks to demonstrate the value of the humanities and social sciences to advancing knowledge in...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
July 1, 2014
Frank Larøi, Tanya Marie Luhrmann, Vaughan Bell et al.
A number of studies have explored hallucinations as complex experiences involving interactions between psychological, biological, and environmental factors and mechanisms. Nevertheless, relatively little attention has focused on the role of culture in shaping hallucinations. This article reviews the published research, drawing on the expertise of both anthropologists and psychologists. We argue...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
January 2014
Flavie Waters, Angela Woods, Charles Fernyhough
This article presents a report on the 2nd meeting of the International Consortium on Hallucination Research, held on September 12th and 13th 2013 at Durham University, UK. Twelve working groups involving specialists in each area presented their findings and sought to summarize the available knowledge, inconsistencies in the field, and ways to progress. The 12 working groups reported on the...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
April 9, 2013
Simon McCarthy-Jones, Joel Krueger, Frank Larøi et al.
One of the leading cognitive models of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) proposes such experiences result from a disturbance in the process by which inner speech is attributed to the self. Research in this area has, however, proceeded in the absence of thorough cognitive and phenomenological investigations of the nature of inner speech, against which AVHs are implicitly or explicitly...