Moreover, is voice hearing a category or dimension in its own right, independent of diagnosis, and why is the auditory modality predominantly implicated in psychotic disorders, while the visual modality dominates in, for example, neurological diseases?Īn auditory verbal hallucination (or simply auditory hallucinations, I will use the terms interchangeably), is typically defined as a sensory (perceptual) experience of hearing a voice in the absence of a corresponding external source ( 1). What we do not know is why hallucinatory episodes occur spontaneously, why they fluctuate over time, and what makes them spontaneously stop. Preliminary results also show that amygdala is implicated in the emotional «colouring» of the voices and that excitatory neurotransmitters might be involved. Using a translational approach, the current status of auditory verbal hallucinations is that they implicate speech perception areas in the left temporal lobe, impairing perception of and attention to external sounds. Finally, I present data from the clinical, cognitive, brain-imaging, and cellular levels, where data from one level validate and support data at another level, called converging of evidence. The horizontal expansion will, however, not advance a deeper understanding of how an auditory verbal hallucination spontaneously starts and stops. To achieve breakthroughs in our understanding of auditory verbal hallucinations, we have to advance vertically through the various levels, rather than the more common approach of staying at our favourite level and advancing horizontally (e.g., more advanced techniques and data acquisition analyses). Another way of saying this is that, to advance knowledge in a research field, it is not only necessary to replicate findings, but also to show how evidence obtained with one method, and at one level of explanation, converges with evidence obtained with another method at another level. Using a Levels of Explanation approach, mental phenomena can be described and explained at different levels (cultural, clinical, cognitive, brain-imaging, cellular and molecular). I suggest a general frame or scheme for the study of auditory verbal hallucinations, called Levels of Explanation. hearing a voice) is defined as a sensory experience in the absence of a corresponding external sensory source that could explain the phenomenological experience. In this invited review article, I present a translational perspective and overview of our research on auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia at the University of Bergen, Norway, with a focus on the neuronal mechanisms underlying the phenomenology of experiencing “hearing voices”.
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