By definition, hallucinations occur only in the full waking state. Yet similarities to sleep-related experiences such as hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations, dreams and parasomnias, have been noted since antiquity. These observations have prompted researchers to suggest a common aetiology for these phenomena based on the neurobiology of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. With our recent...
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...
While contemporary models of psychosis have proposed a number of putative psychological mechanisms, how these impact on individuals to increase intensity of psychotic experiences in real life, outside the research laboratory, remains unclear. We aimed to investigate whether elevated stress sensitivity, experiences of aberrant novelty and salience, and enhanced anticipation of threat contribute...
Anomalous subjective experiences involving an alteration of the basic sense of self (ie, Self-disorder [SD]) are emerging as a core marker of schizophrenia spectrum disorders with potential impact on current early detection strategies as well. In this study, we wished to field-test the prevalence of SD in a clinical sample of adolescent/young adult help-seekers at putative risk for psychosis...
BACKGROUND: The phenomenology of the clinical symptoms indicates that disturbance of the sense of self be a core marker of schizophrenia. AIMS: To compare neural activity related to the self/other-agency judgment in patients with first-episode schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (FES, n = 35) and healthy controls (HC, n = 35). METHOD: A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using motor task...
Schizophrenia is a disturbance of the self, of which the attribution of agency is a major component. In this article, we review current theories of the Sense of Agency, their relevance to schizophrenia, and propose a novel framework for future research. We explore some of the models of agency, in which both bottom-up and top-down processes are implicated in the genesis of agency. We further...
A number of recent articles, many appearing in Schizophrenia Bulletin, signal a renewed interest in phenomenological approaches to our understanding of schizophrenia. These approaches conceptualize schizophrenia as a disorder of altered self-awareness and decreased prereflective social attunement, which may manifest as an impaired understanding of self, others, and the physical world....
Paranoia is receiving increasing attention in its own right, since it is a central experience of psychotic disorders and a marker of the health of a society. Paranoia is associated with use of the most commonly taken illicit drug, cannabis. The objective was to determine whether the principal psychoactive ingredient of cannabis-∆(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-causes paranoia and to use the drug...
Schizophrenia is a multifaceted disorder with various symptoms including auditory hallucinations, egodisturbances, passivity phenomena, and delusions. Recent neurobiological approaches have focused on, especially, the abnormal contents of consciousness, the "substantive parts" as James said, to associate them with the neural mechanisms related to sensory, motor, and cognitive functions, and the...
Much of the research on visual hallucinations (VHs) has been conducted in the context of eye disease and neurodegenerative conditions, but little is known about these phenomena in psychiatric and nonclinical populations. The purpose of this article is to bring together current knowledge regarding VHs in the psychosis phenotype and contrast this data with the literature drawn from...
The phenomenological diversity of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) is not currently accounted for by any model based around a single mechanism. This has led to the proposal that there may be distinct AVH subtypes, which each possess unique (as well as shared) underpinning mechanisms. This could have important implications both for research design and clinical interventions because different...
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...
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...
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...
We explore how hallucinations might be studied within the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) framework, which asks investigators to step back from diagnoses based on symptoms and focus on basic dimensions of functioning. We start with a description of the objectives of the RDoC project and its domains and constructs. Because the RDoC initiative asks...
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...
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...
Introduction: Self-disorders (SD) have been described as a core feature of schizophrenia both in classical and recent psychopathological literature. However, the specificity of SD for the schizophrenia spectrum disorders has never been demonstrated in a diagnostically heterogeneous sample, nor has the concurrent validity of SD been examined. Aim: (1) To examine the specificity of Examination of...
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...
With a tradition of examining self-disturbances (Ichstörungen) in schizophrenia, phenomenological psychiatry studies the person's subjective experience without imposing theoretical agenda on what is reported. Although this tradition offers promising interface with current neurobiological models of schizophrenia, both the concept of Ichstörung and its history are not well understood. In this...
A comprehensive understanding of the phenomenology of auditory hallucinations (AHs) is essential for developing accurate models of their causes. Yet, only 1 detailed study of the phenomenology of AHs with a sample size of N ≥ 100 has been published. The potential for overreliance on these findings, coupled with a lack of phenomenological research into many aspects of AHs relevant to...
Poor insight into illness is considered the primary cause of treatment noncompliance in schizophrenia. In this article, we critically discuss the predominant conceptual accounts of poor insight, which consider it as an ineffective self-reflection, caused either by psychological defenses or impaired metacognition. We argue that these accounts are at odds with the phenomenology of schizophrenia,...
Following the publication of Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology (1913), delusions have been characterized as being nonunderstandable in terms of the person's biography, motivations, and historical-cultural context. According to Jaspers, this loss of understandability is due to an underlying neurobiological process, which has interrupted the normal development of the individual's personality....
Questions concerning both the ontology and epistemology of the "psychiatric object" (symptoms and signs) should be at the forefront of current concerns of psychiatry as a clinical neuroscience. We argue that neglect of these issues is a crucial source of the stagnation of psychiatric research. In honor of the centenary of Karl Jaspers' book, General Psychopathology, we offer a critique of the...
Psilocybin is a classic psychedelic and a candidate drug model of psychosis. This study measured the effects of psilocybin on resting-state network and thalamocortical functional connectivity (FC) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Fifteen healthy volunteers received intravenous infusions of psilocybin and placebo in 2 task-free resting-state scans. Primary analyses focused on...