Schizophrenia Bulletin
June 8, 2016
Ben Alderson-Day, Kelly Diederen, Charles Fernyhough et al.
134 citations
Resting-state brain networks may help explain hallucinations across different sensory modalities and populations. This report from the International Consortium on Hallucination Research reviews evidence linking resting-state alterations to auditory hallucinations, finding connectivity differences in left-hemisphere auditory and language regions, plus atypical interactions of the default mode network with networks for cognitive control and salience. Similar patterns appear in visual hallucinations, suggesting both domain-general and modality-specific network changes. However, high methodological heterogeneity across studies limits direct comparisons. The authors offer recommendations for future research on resting-state connectivity and hallucinations.
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.
Neuroscience of Consciousness
January 1, 2020
Tehseen Noorani, Ben Alderson-Day
8 citations
Carhart-Harris and Friston's REBUS model applies predictive processing to explain how psychedelics alter brain function, offering a foundation for psychedelic psychiatry. The present authors commend this work but argue it underemphasizes contextual factors that shape extreme experiences and their outcomes. They also suggest that the comparisons made with certain non-psychedelic altered states miss more informative parallels elsewhere. Addressing these points would help identify the most relevant mechanisms of action in psychedelic experiences.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
October 6, 2025
Charles Fernyhough, Janna De Boer, Paige E Davis et al.
3 citations
Hallucinations, which occur in many psychiatric disorders, may be better understood through the lens of developmental psychology. Their clinical significance depends on when they appear in a person's life. Key cognitive-developmental processes—such as engaging with imaginary entities, adverse events, executive functioning, social cognition, and language development—shape how hallucinations arise across different sensory modalities. Atypical developmental trajectories, as seen in certain conditions, also influence hallucination prevalence and phenomenology. Integrating developmental and psychiatric perspectives could yield mutual benefits for future research.
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.
November 7, 2022
Joseph M Barnby, Sohee Park, Tatiana Baxter et al.
1 citation
preprint
The felt presence (FP) experience—the sense that someone else is nearby without sensory evidence—ranges from benevolent to distressing and can be personified or ambiguous. FP occurs in neuropsychological conditions, psychosis, paranoia, sleep paralysis, anxiety, endurance sports, and spiritualist communities. This review covers philosophical, phenomenological, clinical, and non-clinical aspects of FP, along with psychometric, cognitive, and neurophysiological measurement methods. It presents current mechanistic explanations, proposes a unifying cognitive framework, and identifies outstanding questions. FP provides a window into the cognitive neuroscience of own-body awareness and social agency detection, an intuitive but poorly understood experience in health and disorder.
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.
Dreams, Narrative, and Liminal Cognition
February 10, 2026
Ben Alderson-Day
Lucid dreaming—awareness during a dream that one is dreaming, sometimes with control over events—is linked to a general tendency toward hallucinatory bodily states. Drawing on the Threshold Worlds survey and comparisons with spiritualists and tulpamancers, the chapter argues that lucid dreamers share a changed relationship to the bodily self, suggesting the proclivity arises from a broader propensity to such experiences.
The lancet. Psychiatry
May 1, 2023
Joseph M Barnby, Sohee Park, Tatiana Baxter et al.
Felt presence is the basic feeling that someone else is nearby without clear sensory evidence, ranging from benevolent to distressing and appearing in neurological conditions, psychosis, sleep paralysis, endurance sports, and spiritualist communities. This review summarizes philosophical, phenomenological, clinical, and non-clinical correlates, along with psychometric, cognitive, and neurophysiological approaches. It presents current mechanistic explanations, proposes a unifying cognitive framework, and identifies outstanding questions. Felt presence offers a way to understand the cognitive neuroscience of own-body awareness and social agency detection as an intuitive but poorly understood experience in both health and disorder.
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.