Encephale
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Despite immense importance of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) in the phenomenology of schizophrenia, the neurocognitive and neurophysiological bases of AVHs remain obscure. On the neurocognitive level, it has been proposed that AVHs arise from the disordered monitoring manifested by patients' inability to recognize their inner speech as being their own. On the neurophysiological level, the AVHs have been attributed to the aberrant activity in the primary auditory cortex (Heschl's gyrus). Although interesting, these models cannot account for the very specific and restricted content of AVHs in individual patients. The specific content of AVHs persists across different psychotic episodes even after extended periods of remission. Furthermore, the AVHs are usually triggered by emotionally charged and stressful situations. ⋯ Finally, in contrast to our initial hypothesis we did not observe any significant differences between processing of the hallucinated versus non-hallucinated words in the primary auditory cortex. In retrospect, this result is not surprising because patients did not experience internally generated AVHs while in the scanner, but instead were exposed exclusively to externally generated stimuli.