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.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
April 17, 2025
Nathan H. Heller, Frederick S. Barrett, Tobias Buchborn et al.
3 citations
Visual hallucinations in Lewy body diseases (Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies) and those induced by serotonergic psychedelics (psilocybin, mescaline) share overlapping phenomenology and neural mechanisms, despite different underlying causes. Both conditions produce visual aberrations from minor distortions to complex hallucinations, including illusory motion and entity encounters. Neuroimaging shows a common pattern of overactive associative cortex and underactive sensory cortex. Serotonin 2A receptor modulation is involved in both: psychedelics act through 5-HT2A and 5-HT1A receptors, while in Lewy body diseases, 5-HT2A receptor upregulation correlates with increased hallucinations, and blocking it with pimavanserin reduces them. Shared cortical signatures include reduced visual evoked responses and shifts toward visual excitation.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
November 16, 2024
Inge Hahne, Marco Zierhut, Niklas Bergmann et al.
3 citations
A yoga-based group intervention (YoGI) added to treatment-as-usual is feasible and acceptable for inpatients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD). In a randomized controlled trial with 50 inpatients, YoGI plus treatment-as-usual showed 95% protocol adherence, 91-94% retention, and a 6% dropout rate. Compared to treatment-as-usual alone, the yoga group had significant improvements in positive symptoms, depression, cognitive fusion, and a mindfulness subscale. Medium-to-large improvements were also seen in body mindfulness, negative and general symptoms, anxiety, stress, quality of life, and attention. No severe adverse events occurred. The findings suggest YoGI may provide benefits beyond standard care, but further robust trials are needed.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
February 21, 2025
Hella Janssen, K.C. van den Berg, Ger P. J. Keijsers et al.
2 citations
In people with psychosis spectrum disorders, maladaptive mental imagery is linked to auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs). Four imagery techniques were tested in a single-case series: Imagery Rescripting (ImRs), Promoting positive Imagery de novo (Pos-Im), Metacognitive Imagery techniques (Meta-Im), and playing Tetris. Mental imagery severity significantly decreased after ImRs and Pos-Im, but not after Meta-Im or Tetris. AVHs decreased with all conditions, with the largest effects for ImRs and Pos-Im. Secondary measures showed reductions in AVH severity, mood, anxiety, imagery frequency, and appraisals. The authors conclude imagery techniques are feasible and acceptable and may be valuable additions to AVH treatment.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
June 17, 2025
Daphne J Holt, Rachel Sussman, Daniel Johnson et al.
1 citation
A four-session group-based Resilience Training (RT) program focusing on mindfulness skills reduced symptoms of psychosis and depression in 103 young adults with mild-to-moderate psychotic experiences or depressive symptoms. Participants showed increased mindfulness skills, decreased emotion reactivity, and reduced transdiagnostic symptoms after training. In a subset of 41 participants who underwent fMRI, training was associated with increased functional connectivity between the hippocampus and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. The decrease in emotion reactivity fully mediated the link between skill acquisition and symptom reduction, suggesting that RT improves mental health by enhancing stress management. The findings support emotion reactivity as a target for preventive interventions.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
April 10, 2026
Cherise Rosen, Liping Tong, Julia G. Lebovitz et al.
Depersonalization (DP) and derealization (DR) are alterations in sense of self and lifeworld that often co-occur in psychosis. Over 20 years, the Chicago Longitudinal Study examined these phenomena across psychiatric categories. DP was broadly distributed across diagnoses, while DR showed greater specificity to schizophrenia. Network analyses revealed three foundational constructs in schizophrenia: alteration in sense of self/lifeworld, multisensory experiences, and bodily experiences; bodily and multisensory alterations were foundational in affective-psychosis. Self-disturbance emerged as foundational only in schizophrenia. The findings support reframing DP and DR as points on a continuum of attenuated alterations in sense of self and lifeworld, representing a fundamental self-disturbance in existential feeling.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
February 1, 2026
Huiying Nie, Liwei Zheng
Integrating mindfulness yoga into middle school physical education courses significantly improves students' emotional regulation and reduces anxiety and depression. In a quasi-experiment with 162 eighth graders, the group receiving a 12-week mindfulness yoga program (two class hours per week covering asana, breathing meditation, and mindfulness awareness) scored higher on the Emotion Regulation Scale (M = 82.63) than the control group (M = 69.35). Classroom observations showed positive emotion expression increased from 2.3 to 5.7 times per class hour, while emotional outbursts dropped from 1.8 to 0.3 times. Practice duration correlated positively with emotional regulation ability.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
January 16, 2026
Neil Thomas, Thomas Ward, Eleanor Longden et al.
A new group of psychological interventions for hearing voices, called relational therapies, focuses on changing how a person relates to their voices. These therapies include Relating Therapy, Talking with Voices, and AVATAR Therapy. They use experiential dialogue with voices, such as role-play, direct conversation, or computer avatars, to improve the hearer-voice relationship. AVATAR Therapy has shown effectiveness in multiple randomized trials, Relating Therapy in two trials, and a trial for Talking with Voices is ongoing. Key mechanisms involve changing how the hearer relates to the voice, reducing threat, and integrating the voice experience into the person's life story. Future research should explore which therapy works for whom and how these therapies affect voice hearing itself.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
December 14, 2025
Stjepan Curic, Moritz Haaf, Darius Zokai et al.
Deficits in automatic auditory processing, measured by mismatch negativity (MMN), are linked to poor outcomes in schizophrenia and involve glutamate dysfunction. In a placebo-controlled crossover EEG study with 25 participants, ketamine—which induces schizophrenia-like symptoms—reduced MMN amplitudes, theta power, and P3a. Pretreatment with glycine, an NMDAR coagonist, did not prevent ketamine's effects on MMN or P3a amplitude but did block ketamine's reduction of theta power and phase consistency associated with duration deviant MMN. Elevated theta activity due to glycine predicted improvement in negative symptoms. The findings confirm the glutamate system's role in pre-attentive auditory processing deficits and suggest MMN's theta signature may help identify patients responsive to glutamatergic treatments.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
March 22, 2023
Eric J Tan, Iris E C Sommer, Lena Palaniyappan
This special issue examines the role of language in psychosis, exploring the connections between formal thought disorder and conceptual disorganization, along with speech and language markers and their neural underpinnings. It also discusses the use of computational methods to analyze language in psychosis and the potential of speech and language data for digital phenotyping in psychiatry.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
October 21, 2021
Leonie Klock, Martin Voss, Markus Weichenberger et al.
Healthy participants experienced thoughts as self-generated when they believed a fake device was deactivated, and attributed thoughts externally when they believed the device was activated—an experience usually reported only by patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Distinct activations in the medial prefrontal cortex were observed: ventral mPFC activation linked to a sense of thought authorship and dorsal mPFC activation to a diminished sense of thought authorship. This functional differentiation corresponds to research on self- and other-oriented reflection processes and on patients with schizophrenia who show abnormal mPFC activation. Results support the notion that the mPFC might be involved in thought authorship and anomalous self-experiences.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
March 8, 2021
J. van Os, L. Pries, M. Ten Have et al.
Using a within-person design that controls for fixed genetic and nongenetic confounders, data from two general population cohorts followed over about 10 years show that prior cannabis use is strongly associated with later attenuated psychotic experiences (adjusted odds ratio 7.03). In contrast, prior psychotic experiences were not associated with later cannabis use. The findings suggest a causal effect of cannabis on psychosis, but not the reverse.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
January 1, 2015
Georg Northoff
Schizophrenia involves symptoms like auditory hallucinations and delusions, often linked to abnormal contents of consciousness, or 'substantive parts,' which are associated with sensory and cognitive brain functions. However, patients also experience temporal fragmentation, where thoughts feel disconnected, reflecting abnormalities in the 'transitive parts' that normally glue the stream of consciousness together. This article proposes a neurophenomenal hypothesis focusing on the brain's intrinsic resting state activity, rather than task-evoked activity, as the neural basis for this temporal linkage. In schizophrenia, disruptions in this intrinsic activity may directly cause the fragmented experience of the transitive parts of consciousness.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
September 1, 2012
Edward F. Domino, Elliot D. Luby
Phencyclidine, originally developed as a general anesthetic, has also been used as a chemical model of schizophrenia and as a drug of abuse. Research on phencyclidine and its chemical derivatives, such as ketamine, has laid a foundation for understanding the neuropathology of schizophrenia, though this understanding is still in its early stages.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
September 1, 2012
Bita Moghaddam, John H. Krystal
Collaborative work since the late 1980s used NMDA receptor antagonists as a translational tool to move beyond the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia and understand glutamate synaptic dysfunction. The approach provided insights into disrupted cortical function in schizophrenia and identified potential new treatment targets, making clinical testing of the first target feasible. Advances in systems neuroscience enable new translational research, but obstacles in funding and academia-industry collaborations threaten future progress.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
September 1, 2012
Daniel C Javitt, Stephen R Zukin, Uriel Heresco-Levy et al.
Over the past 20 years, glutamatergic models of schizophrenia have gained acceptance, based on phencyclidine (PCP) inducing psychosis by blocking NMDA-type glutamate receptors. This review examines two predictions: neurocognitive deficits in schizophrenia should mirror those from NMDAR dysfunction, and agents stimulating NMDAR function should be therapeutic. Studies show severe sensory dysfunction in schizophrenia, including impaired mismatch negativity and visual P1 potentials, similar to deficits from NMDAR antagonists like ketamine. Sensory dysfunction predicts impairments in higher-order cognition like emotion recognition. Treatment studies with glycine-site compounds (glycine, D-serine, D-cycloserine) and glycine transport inhibitors (RG1678) show significant beneficial effects on persistent symptoms, suggesting novel treatment and prevention approaches.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
November 1, 2008
Cécile Henquet, Marta Di Forti, Paul D. Morrison et al.
Cannabis use is considered a contributory cause of schizophrenia and psychotic illness, but only a small proportion of users develop psychosis. The amount, duration, and strength of cannabis consumption, as well as age at first exposure, partly explain this. Genetic factors likely play a role in both short- and long-term effects on psychosis. This review discusses studies using genetic, epidemiological, experimental, and observational techniques to investigate gene-environment correlation and interaction within the cannabis-psychosis association. Evidence suggests that mechanisms of gene-environment interaction underlie the link, with multiple genetic variations and other environmental factors (e.g., stress) interacting with cannabis to increase psychosis risk. Further research on higher-order interactions is needed.
Schizophrenia Bulletin
January 1, 1993
R E Hoffman, T H McGlashan
Schizophrenia may involve a breakdown in communication between different cortical areas of the brain. Evidence from psychotic states induced by phencyclidine, the adult form of metachromatic leukodystrophy, and neurometabolic studies supports this idea. A computer simulation of such brain pathology suggests two consequences: some cortical circuits become functionally autonomous, and a subset of these produce "parasitic foci" that repetitively reproduce the same cognitive output. These parasitic foci, located at different levels of language processing, are proposed to underlie symptoms such as delusions of control, paranoid delusions of the idee fixe type, thought broadcasting, auditory hallucinations, and certain deficit symptoms. A neurodevelopmental model of impaired corticocortical communication is described.