Hearing voices in the head: Two meta-analyses on structural correlates of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia

Romeo, Zaira; Spironelli, Chiara

doi:10.1016/j.nicl.2022.103241

Cited by 20 publications

(17 citation statements)

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“…Additional studies found the volume of INS associated with affective empathy [ 53 ] and callous-unemotional traits [ 53 , 54 ], supporting the association between impairments of the INS-related emotion process and violence types in SCZ. In addition, the volume reduction of INS was observed in both the VSC and NSC compared with HC, and might be associated with positive and negative symptoms [ 32 , 55 ], suggesting that INS abnormalities might also be correlated with the disease itself [ 56 ]. This study provides primary evidence that the deficits in GMV of INS play a crucial role in both violence and impulsivity among patients with schizophrenia.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the present study, a reduction in GMV was observed in the bilateral STG in both the NSC and VSC groups, compared with HC. Smaller volume of bilateral STG, which associated with severity of auditory verbal hallucinations and delusions [ 32 , 68 ], was also found in NSC and VSC compared with HC, suggesting that the decreased GMV in these areas might be specific to the disease per se [ 69 ]. The positive correlation between the GMV of STG and impulsiveness was also found in the present study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, numerous studies control the level of severity of psychiatric symptoms, but few of them conducted subgroup analysis on the positive and negative symptoms separately. Studies found that positive symptoms were often associated with an increased risk of violence [ 30 ] as well as a lower GMV of the fronto-temporo-parietal regions [ 31 , 32 ], while negative symptoms were often associated with altered volume of some brain structures such as the putamen [ 33 ]. Thus, controlling for positive and negative symptoms separately may also be necessary for studies of violence in SCZ.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Brain structural alterations associated with impulsiveness in male violent patients with schizophrenia

Lu,

Gou,

Sun

et al. 2024

BMC Psychiatry

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Background Violence in schizophrenia (SCZ) is a phenomenon associated with neurobiological factors. However, the neural mechanisms of violence in patients with SCZ are not yet sufficiently understood. Thus, this study aimed to explore the structural changes associated with the high risk of violence and its association with impulsiveness in patients with SCZ to reveal the possible neurobiological basis. Method The voxel-based morphometry approach and whole-brain analyses were used to measure the alteration of gray matter volume (GMV) for 45 schizophrenia patients with violence (VSC), 45 schizophrenia patients without violence (NSC), and 53 healthy controls (HC). Correlation analyses were used to examine the association of impulsiveness and brain regions associated with violence. Results The results demonstrated reduced GMV in the right insula within the VSC group compared with the NSC group, and decreased GMV in the right temporal pole and left orbital part of superior frontal gyrus only in the VSC group compared to the HC group. Spearman correlation analyses further revealed a positive correlation between impulsiveness and GMV of the left superior temporal gyrus, bilateral insula and left medial orbital part of the superior frontal gyrus in the VSC group. Conclusion Our findings have provided further evidence for structural alterations in patients with SCZ who had engaged in severe violence, as well as the relationship between the specific brain alterations and impulsiveness. This work provides neural biomarkers and improves our insight into the neural underpinnings of violence in patients with SCZ.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Brain structural alterations associated with impulsiveness in male violent patients with schizophrenia

Lu,

Gou,

Sun

et al. 2024

BMC Psychiatry

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“…These findings indicate a reduced left-hemisphere lateralisation for language perception, which has been associated with greater AVH severity (Hugdahl et al, 2012), mediated by impaired functional and structural interhemispheric auditory connectivity (Steinmann et al, 2019). Such AVH severity, in turn, has been linked to asymmetric structural abnormalities, including reduced grey matter volume in the left insula (Romeo and Spironelli, 2022), and a smaller surface area in this area of the brain in actively hallucinating schizophrenia participants compared to healthy controls (Sone et al, 2022).…”

Section: Using Pavlovian Conditioning To Explore Left Lateralisation ...mentioning

confidence: 91%

Investigating the lateralisation of experimentally induced auditory verbal hallucinations

Mak,

Couth,

Plack

et al. 2023

Front. Neurosci.

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IntroductionAuditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs), or hearing non-existent voices, are a common symptom in psychosis. Recent research suggests that AVHs are also experienced by neurotypical individuals. Individuals with schizophrenia experiencing AVHs and neurotypicals who are highly prone to hallucinate both produce false positive responses in auditory signal detection. These findings suggest that voice-hearing may lie on a continuum with similar mechanisms underlying AVHs in both populations.MethodsThe current study used a monaural auditory stimulus in a signal detection task to test to what extent experimentally induced verbal hallucinations are (1) left-lateralised (i.e., more likely to occur when presented to the right ear compared to the left ear due to the left-hemisphere dominance for language processing), and (2) predicted by self-reported hallucination proneness and auditory imagery tendencies. In a conditioning task, fifty neurotypical participants associated a negative word on-screen with the same word being played via headphones through successive simultaneous audio-visual presentations. A signal detection task followed where participants were presented with a target word on-screen and indicated whether they heard the word being played concurrently amongst white noise.ResultsResults showed that Pavlovian audio-visual conditioning reliably elicited a significant number of false positives (FPs). However, FP rates, perceptual sensitivities, and response biases did not differ between either ear. They were neither predicted by hallucination proneness nor auditory imagery.DiscussionThe results show that experimentally induced FPs in neurotypicals are not left-lateralised, adding further weight to the argument that lateralisation may not be a defining feature of hallucinations in clinical or non-clinical populations. The findings also support the idea that AVHs may be a continuous phenomenon that varies in severity and frequency across the population. Studying induced AVHs in neurotypicals may help identify the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms contributing to AVHs in individuals with psychotic disorders.

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“…These studies systematically report reductions in either gray matter or cortical thickness within the temporal and frontal areas, more specifically within the transverse temporal gyrus and superior temporal gyrus [14] , [15] , in the middle temporal gyrus [16] , [17] or the inferior frontal gyrus [15] , [17] . Moreover, the severity of AVHs was associated with significant reductions in gray matter volume in the left superior temporal gyrus, the left insula, and the left inferior frontal gyrus [12] , [18] , [19] . According to the Frith theory, these findings suggest that reduced gray matter volume in brain regions specialized in auditory and language processing may contribute to a deficit in accurate internal speech attribution [11] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Sulcal pits of the superior temporal sulcus in schizophrenia patients with auditory verbal hallucinations

Lerosier,

Simon,

Takerkart

et al. 2024

AIMSN

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<abstract> <p>Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are among the most common and disabling symptoms of schizophrenia. They involve the superior temporal sulcus (STS), which is associated with language processing; specific STS patterns may reflect vulnerability to auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia. STS sulcal pits are the deepest points of the folds in this region and were investigated here as an anatomical landmark of AVHs. This study included 53 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and past or present AVHs, as well as 100 healthy control volunteers. All participants underwent a 3-T magnetic resonance imaging T1 brain scan, and sulcal pit differences were compared between the two groups. Compared with controls, patients with AVHs had a significantly different distributions for the number of sulcal pits in the left STS, indicating a less complex morphological pattern. The association of STS sulcal morphology with AVH suggests an early neurodevelopmental process in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia with AVHs.</p> </abstract>

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Hearing voices in the head: Two meta-analyses on structural correlates of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia

Cited by 20 publications

References 75 publications

Brain structural alterations associated with impulsiveness in male violent patients with schizophrenia

Brain structural alterations associated with impulsiveness in male violent patients with schizophrenia

Investigating the lateralisation of experimentally induced auditory verbal hallucinations

Sulcal pits of the superior temporal sulcus in schizophrenia patients with auditory verbal hallucinations

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