When we are told that someone says “hear voices” from people who are not really present, the term “hallucination” comes to mind. Hallucinations are a phenomenon that we are used to associating with mental disorders such as schizophrenia. However, we can all suffer them sometime …
Verbal auditory hallucinations are defined as those subjective perceptions in the form of external conversations that occur in the absence of external stimuli. Although they are an interesting topic for many of us, those who suffer from them experience them as something unwanted, which is presented in an intrusive and unintentional way and which generates discomfort. This type of phenomenon can vary from just a sound to a conversation, and generally sounds like normal voices with their particular volume, tone and accent that are more frequently perceived as coming from the environment (and not from within the individual).
Although this type of hallucinations is usually a symptom of diseases such as schizophrenia, parkinson’s or even Alzheimer’s, there are studies that estimate that up to 13.2% of the healthy population suffers from them. They can occur just when we are going to fall asleep or when we wake up, and both stress and fatigue are very common precipitating factors, both in the context of mental illness and without it.
Two of the most recent neurocognitive hypotheses are described in an article in the journal Brain Sciences in 2013. One of these hypotheses states that verbal hallucinations occur as a result of a failure in verbal self-monitoring that would not provide adequate information to the somatosensory cortices. . This would make the subjective experience of talking to oneself appear unintentional and be interpreted as if others were the authors of the conversation. The second of these hypotheses suggests an aberrant memory model according to which poor memory processes are at the basis of verbal hallucinations. According to this approach, failure to inhibit traumatic memories could generate intrusive thoughts that are interpreted as coming from other people.
Also recently, with the discoveries made using neuroimaging and neural connectivity techniques , it has been described that in verbal auditory hallucinations there could be an altered connection pattern in the fronto-temporal network, involved in language processing and memory. Furthermore, these findings have been found both in psychotic patients and in healthy people suffering from auditory hallucinations of the verbal type.
Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
