Psychopathology
August 27, 2026
Sarah Parry, Sarah Carr, Ben Alderson-Day
Felt presence (FP) is an emerging field of clinical research and to our knowledge there are no studies exploring the phenomenon within children and young people. The current study aims to address this by reporting the experiences of FPs from a clinical sample of young people involved in the ChUSE trial, a feasibility and acceptability RCT looking at supporting young people with distressing...
Dreams, Narrative, and Liminal Cognition
February 10, 2026
Ben Alderson-Day
Abstract Lucid dreaming refers to the awareness that one is experiencing a dream, which for some may also include being able to control actions in events in the dreamworld. In recent years there has been growing interest in the experimental possibilities of lucid dreaming, and its potential benefits for health and wellbeing. But who are the lucid dreamers, and how do they have (or learn) this...
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...
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...
The lancet. Psychiatry
May 1, 2023
Joseph M Barnby, Sohee Park, Tatiana Baxter et al.
1 citation
The felt presence experience is the basic feeling that someone else is present in the immediate environment, without clear sensory evidence. Ranging from benevolent to distressing, personified to ambiguous, felt presence has been observed in neurological case studies and within psychosis and paranoia, associated with sleep paralysis and anxiety, and recorded within endurance sports and...
Schizophr Bull
February 1, 2023
Tanya M Luhrmann, Ben Alderson-Day, Ann Chen et al.
AbstractThere are communities in which hearing voices frequently is common and expected, and in which participants are not expected to have a need for care. This paper compares the ideas and practices of these communities. We observe that these communities utilize cultural models to identify and to explain voice-like events—and that there are some common features to these models across...
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...
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...
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...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2020
Tehseen Noorani, Ben Alderson-Day
8 citations
In 'REBUS and the Anarchic Brain: Towards a Unified Model of the Brain Action of Psychedelics', Carhart-Harris and Friston offer an important analysis of what the predictive processing framework has to offer our understanding of psychedelic experiences, providing an invaluable ground for psychedelic psychiatry. While applauding this, we encourage paying greater attention to contextual factors...
Schizophrenia Bulletin
August 8, 2018
Tanya M Luhrmann, Ben Alderson-Day, Vaughan Bell et al.
74 citations
That trauma can play a significant role in the onset and maintenance of voice-hearing is one of the most striking and important developments in the recent study of psychosis. Yet the finding that trauma increases the risk for hallucination and for psychosis is quite different from the claim that trauma is necessary for either to occur. Trauma is often but not always associated with...
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...