Wolfson Centre for Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience, School of Psychology, UK.
Cereb Cortex. 2011 Feb;21(2):330-7. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhq097. Epub 2010 Jun 7.
Although auditory verbal hallucinations are often thought to denote mental illness, the majority of voice hearers do not satisfy the criteria for a psychiatric disorder. Here, we report the first functional imaging study of such nonclinical hallucinations in 7 healthy voice hearers comparing them with auditory imagery. The human voice area in the superior temporal sulcus was activated during both hallucinations and imagery. Other brain areas supporting both hallucinations and imagery included fronto temporal language areas in the left hemisphere and their contralateral homologues and the supplementary motor area (SMA). Hallucinations are critically distinguished from imagery by lack of voluntary control. We expected this difference to be reflected in the relative timing of prefrontal and sensory areas. Activity of the SMA indeed preceded that of auditory areas during imagery, whereas during hallucinations, the 2 processes occurred instantaneously. Voluntary control was thus represented in the relative timing of prefrontal and sensory activation, whereas the sense of reality of the sensory experience may be a product of the voice area activation. Our results reveal mechanisms of the generation of sensory experience in the absence of external stimulation and suggest new approaches to the investigation of the neurobiology of psychopathology.
虽然听觉言语幻觉通常被认为是精神疾病的标志，但大多数幻听者并不符合精神障碍的标准。在这里，我们报告了第一个对 7 名健康幻听者进行的非临床幻觉的功能性成像研究，并将其与听觉意象进行了比较。在听觉幻觉和听觉想象过程中，颞上回的人类声音区域被激活。支持幻觉和想象的其他大脑区域包括左半球的额颞语言区及其对侧同形区和补充运动区（SMA）。幻觉与想象的关键区别在于缺乏自愿控制。我们预计这种差异会反映在前额叶和感觉区域的相对时间上。SMA 的活动确实先于听觉区域的活动，而在幻觉期间，这两个过程是同时发生的。因此，自愿控制是在前额叶和感觉激活的相对时间上表现出来的，而感觉体验的现实感可能是声音区域激活的产物。我们的研究结果揭示了在没有外部刺激的情况下产生感觉体验的机制，并为研究精神病理学的神经生物学提供了新的方法。
