Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany) - The Consciousness Library

Hearing voices and other altered perceptual experiences across psychotic, mood, and anxiety disorders: from phenomenology and mechanisms to future directions.

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.

DOI: 10.1038/s41537-025-00673-3 Full text

Moral emotions and auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia (Heidelberg, Germany) February 15, 2025 Joshua Chiappelli, Yizhou Ma, Tiffany Beason et al.

Adolescence and early adulthood involve developing cognitive and social skills for adult roles, including forging a meaningful sense of identity. This period overlaps with the typical age of onset for schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses. The authors argue that connections between identity formation and psychosis have been underexplored in biological psychiatry, partly due to challenges in measuring personal and moral identity. They propose a conceptual framework linking normative developmental processes, moral emotions, and the phenomenology of hallucinations in schizophrenia, aiming to inspire novel research approaches.

DOI: 10.1038/s41537-025-00574-5 Full text

Papers

Hearing voices and other altered perceptual experiences across psychotic, mood, and anxiety disorders: from phenomenology and mechanisms to future directions.

Moral emotions and auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia.