Background
Part of the mission of Intervoice is developing positive, hopeful messages that promote acceptance, tolerance and understanding of voice hearing experiences. One strategy to achieve this involves the generation of new knowledge and evidence. Unfortunately, however, much research presently being conducted maintains the idea that voices are in some way connected to illness or disease. We believe that this is because the questions posed are partly designed to come to this conclusion (for example, that voices “are a symptom of schizophrenia”).
In response to this, Intervoice has set up its own Research Committee. The Committee is comprised of a mixture of voice hearers, academic professionals and mental health workers. All its members are actively involved in international research into hearing voices and/or promoting more diverse understandings of the voice hearing experience.
Research guided by voice-hearers themselves
Our main aim is to generate knowledge that both supports the aims of Intervoice and influences society, the academic community and mental health practice. Crucially, however, our work will be informed by the needs of voice hearers themselves; issues which are relevant and valuable for them in their daily lives. We want voice hearers, as well as their friends, allies, and supporters, to respond to the query: what research questions are relevant to you?
For example, issues might include:
- What is the effect of medication on voices?
- How useful are self-help groups?
- What are helpful ways for nurses and psychiatrists to respond to voice hearers?
- What information is helpful for friends and family members?
- What coping strategies are effective?
Once ideas and suggestions have been sent to us, the committee members will either put these questions onto their own research agendas, or encourage collaborators to address them (e.g., PhD students). In the long-term, we will also set up a database of questions that are available to other researchers from organisations and universities outside of Intervoice.
If you would like to submit a research suggestion, or just want further information, then please contact [email protected] or leave a comment below.
Let us know what research areas are important to you
Whether or not you have any ideas for research questions, we’re interested to see what areas are most important to the Intervoice community. Please take a minute to fill in our poll and let us know what matters to you.
The use of inner voice has helped a lot of voice hearers deal with their voices. How many is not yet researched.
For me it’s the copingmethod that helped me live with voices and recover completely, including getting of medication.
3 advantages:
- Possibility of inner dialogue with the voices. 2-way traffic instead of 1-way. A lot voice hearers talk with the voices out loud, but this is not always socially understood/accepted. Inner dialogue gives the voice hearer to interact with the voices, without the social environment noticing that.
- One’s inner voice can block out the other voices. When one speaks one’s thoughts inside, there is no space for other voices (at least in my case).
- The use of inner speech can help get more grip/control over one’s own thoughts and help make up one’s own mind. When you puts your thoughts into words you make them concrete. When you do this with inner speech, you become very aware of your own thoughts and you can literally choose what you do and don’t want to think.
How to devellop one’s inner voice:
- from outside in: from speaking out loud, to whispering, to completly internalised. Similar to to learning to read silently.
-from the inside. Using auditory verbal imagery. Imagining saying something.
How is this in the brain?
Normal (inner) speech production and comprehension mostly takes place in the left hemisfere (Broca’s and Wernicke’s area).
During voice hearing these language area’s are activated on the other, right, side of the brain.
I expect from this that inner dialogue with voices would involve communication/increased connectivity between the language area’s in both hemisferes.
My goal is to do research into these area’s and devellop therapy & trainings based on this principle. I know this can help a lot voice hearers! I realy hope that the researchers of Intervoice are interested in realising these ambitions! Iris Sommer from Utrecht, The Netherlands has showed interest to research this. We are going to devellop a questionaire about this.
All the best
Robin Timmers
Voice Hearer / Expert by Experience / bachelor Psychologist
Hi – I haven’t managed to read everything on this whole site – but I haven’t found any mention in what I’ve looked through of anyone addressing possible or potential differences in origin/reasons for/meanings/causes/ways of managing voices that seem to be INSIDE the head vs voices that appear to originate OUTSIDE the head.
My personal experience is that these are 2 very different things, and very different ways of understanding them and dealing with them are needed.
Is this something that is already known and researched? I have read much of the more recent international literature on the effects of trauma on development, dissociation etc, but have not found anything on this.
I have not found anything that appears to relate to this issue on this site either.
search about lanoswww and spy lanos and wikia to know about hearing voice and mind control
I have never heard voices before in my life until my son died suddenly about a month ago. Now I have heard them on two occasions. I don’t know how to make sense of this.I am a psychiatric nurse (retired). Could it be PTSD or post anesthesia auditory hallunation?
I am developing a research protocol to test the efficacy of remote healing and to differentiate between hallucinations and voices with veridical authenticity. Would this be of interest?
Hi Terrence,
I am very much interested in what you are doing. I am starting to do reseach myself in this area. Where can I find more about what you are doing?
I have been hearing voices for over 15 years…I am homeless…Last week a girl came up to the freeway where I was flying sign (begging) and I heard a voice yell, “Get out of here!” The girl turned towards me and asked me, did you just tell me to get out of here?…I was stunned..I said no, I didn’t say anything…even though I did hear a mans voice saying that…I didn’t tell her I heard anything I just let her know that I didn’t say anything…You want to know something…today I started to cry, happily knowing that I am not as crazy as the doctors have perscribed me to be…when I go to the clinic I am going to tell the Doctor this story I am shareing with you….Someone really heard the voices that I hear….The voice the girl heard was someone she knew..Her ex-boy friend Caveman…what’s strange is she heard my voice, not the voice that heard being her boyfriend..today I smiled..Today Randy found out that he isn’t crazy…today Randy could really believe in this…today I laughed and cried…Its going to be ok…Sincerely Randy J Berton..
Has anyone who hear voices had a stranger or someone they know hear what was said?…I live in Pasadena, limited by insurance. Medi-Cal…Does anyone here at intervoice know of any doctors in Pasadena who spealize in this field? and do they except Medi-Cal?….I am currently attending a clinic in Arcadia, California..Arcadia Mental Health…Thank you..Randy J Berton (Personal details removed by Intervoice Admin)
I have been hearing voices for over 11 years. I would like to tell you that my asking Jesus to help me is what saved me. The bible speaks of spirits why is it that we refuse to believe that they exist. They are real- unfortunately it is not our subconscious. What if we could accept that they are real and that some of them mean to harm us. I agree that we should try to live in peace with our voices but we need to be wary of spirits telling us what to do particularly when they lead us away from God. Please consider including this in your research. Thank you, Karen
lately i think ive been being stalked by the police,and there causing me to hear voices i feel this is a vilation of my constitutional rights,and ive filed a police report,i expect results
I agree with an earlier post that it is important to discern between voice/s heard coming from inside the head and those heard coming outside the head – i would assert they are two very different experiences …
There needs to be more publicity to get it out there that hearing things is NOT a sure sign of a mental illness … and is more akin to being left-handed or artistic or gifted at maths or the like … it’s just a receptor in the head that some of us are in tune with and others are not … why isn’t there investigation into why they are NOT able to rather than why we ARE able to hear voices … My personal theory is that the voices (traditionally) are known to be distracting and possibly unreliable (though they can engender some wonders of creativity i would argue). Science in the 20th century maintained that anything that was not repeatable was not fact … anything that could not be seen by others or operate predictably (like hearing voices) was put into the ‘superstition’ basket … and from there into the ‘mental illness’ category … and in those who were unfortunately prone to violent reaction medical intervention in the form of prescribed medications became the treatment … necessary for those with dangerous psychotic delusions perhaps … but for those of us who seem merely neurotic … perhaps it is too extreme to medicate our minds out of existence …
Even though i experienced trauma early in my life and subsequently developed the ‘talent’ of being ‘disassociative’ as a way of tolerating abuse i would not credit the trauma as the origin of the voices … i remember a regular awareness of the presence of ‘something unseen’ when i was only three or four years old … long before anything horrible happened to me …
My conclusion is that there are pros and cons to hearing voices … most people don’t believe me when i say that it happens … i don’t bother telling most people about it …
I would like to hear more about research into hearing voices cross culturally. I am particularly interested in the Buddhist concept of ‘annata’ (non-self) and voice hearing.
David
I would like to see more research into psychic phenonmenon and hearing voices. Just recently my nephew told me he thought he was going crazy, his actions made no sense, one minute he would be happy the next crying. I gave him the good news that he was psychic and gave him the tools to be able to work with his abilities and recognize the indivdiuals he was picking up and how to deal with what was happening with the information he was picking up. Voices are also in this category and in reading some of the articles it strikes me that once again there are individuals who have psychic abilities including hearing voices but have no idea how to deal with their abilities or what it means. It’s almost like a sightless world telling a sighted person they are crazy because they can see and let’s medicate you so you won’t see anymore; let’s make the phenomenon go away rather than finding out what it is really about because we haven’t a clue how to approach it or declare you crazy but still not give you the tools to understand your abilities. I wonder who is crazier?
My attempts to understand some of what I with this “illness” (an integration disorder referred to as schizophrenia) experience started off several years ago with a metacognitive approach and this is what I now ask myself:
1.) What can we learn from people who hear their own thoughts as alien voices and in response to non-verbal environmental sounds are able to generate the perception of an external voice “that retain certain acoustic features that were present in the original signal” ?
2.) What if each and every one of us are able to use covert speech to generate the perception of an external voice “that retain certain acoustic features that were present in the original signal” when we need to restore and better distinguish a verbal message ?
3.) Can the gestures you are about to produce during covert speech when you are able to hear the sensory consequence of covert speech like the gestures you intend to produce during overt speech determine what you expect to hear and can a top-down sensory expectation like this be used to select all features matching the sensory consequence you are about to produce ?
4.) Are you able to hear the sensory consequence of covert speech in integration with what you were able to select with a corresponding top-down sensory expectation ?
5.) How are people able to hear their own thoughts out loud in response to un-patterned noise of a very low volume (what normally is unattended and below awareness) ?
6.) Is Treisman´s attenuation model correct in its claim that “paying attention to a message means increasing its subjective loudness” ?
7.) Can a previous exposure to a tone enable the perception of the same tone at a lower volume than otherwise would have been possible (Hemisfärernas musik, s.53, Jan Fagius) because you expect to hear the tone you were exposed to and are able to use what you expect to hear to select (pay attention to) all features matching the tone you were exposed to ?
8.) Can excessive attentional focus on all features matching a top-down sensory expectation substantially increase the subjective loudness of what you are able to select (peripheral features not otherwise brought to awareness) when you are trying to hear the voice you are about to produce and will the subjective loudness of what you are able to select determine the subjective loudness of the voice you are about to produce ?
9.) Is it harder to reveal a verbal illusion in response to un-patterned noise below a certain threshold and will this sometimes result in a tendency to interpret environmental or tinnitus-like sounds of a very low volume ?
10.) Why do people lose the ability to generate an act of will with which they are able to consciously control covert speech ?
11. ) Is one of the most influential cognitive models of auditory verbal hallucinations correct in its claim that “a failure to adequately monitor the production of one’s own inner speech leads to verbal thought being misidentified as an alien voice” ?
12.) Are people who hear their own thoughts as alien voices forced to divide their attention between their ability to predictively monitor the production of a sensory consequence and what they are able to select with a corresponding top-down sensory expectation ?
13.) Do people more easily lose the ability to control covert speech and hear their own thoughts as alien voices because they are forced to divide their attention between two similar tasks ?
14.) Why am I the only one who uses a well known experience many people share (two similar tasks will often interfere with each other more than two different tasks) in an attempt to make it easier to understand the lack of voluntary control ?
15.) Will not what you are able to select, when you are trying to hear the voice you are about to produce, automatically correspond to some features matching the sensory consequence you are about to produce and can not the attention you devote to a competing task due to a similarity more effectively suppress the ability to control how you respond ?
16.) Can two in some way similar tasks compete with each other more than two different tasks because the available attention capacity is set (limited) as if you were to perform only one task and can this be assumed to depend on the way in which “recurrent competitive networks tend to normalize their total activity” ?
17.) Can the lost ability to generate an act of will with which you are able to consciously control covert speech with regards to a certain goal be as essential to our ability to restore and better distinguish a verbal message as it can be devastating to people with an integration disorder referred to as schizophrenia ?
18.) Can what you are able to attend when you are trying to hear the voice you are about to produce more or less suppress the ability to control covert speech and do people who more or less lose the ability to control covert speech more or less lose the ability to inhibit a verbal response ?
19.) Can what you are able to attend when you are trying to hear the voice you are about to produce be more demanding when you get a better match between the sensory consequence you are about to produce (what you expect to hear) and bottom-up sensory signals ?
20.) Are you more motivated to produce a verbal response when you get a better match between a corresponding top-down sensory expectation and bottom-up sensory signals and will the motivational state you are in when you get a better match between the sensory consequence you are about to produce and bottom-up sensory signals increase the attention you devote to all features matching the sensory consequence you are about to produce ?
21.) Is it harder to inhibit a verbal response when you get a better match between a corresponding top-down sensory expectation and bottom-up sensory signals and will this result in a tendency to produce the most equivalent sensory consequence you are able to produce ?
22.) Are several top-down sensory expectations simultaneously available when the gesture you need to use is selected and are you able to select the articulatory gesture you need to use (the one with the most equivalent sensory consequence you are able to produce) when what you are able to attend with a corresponding top-down sensory expectation (a competing task), more than what you are able to attend with any other to a lesser extent matching top-down sensory expectation, suppress the ability to control covert speech (To more or less lose the ability to control covert speech is to more or less lose the ability to inhibit a verbal response!… ) ?
23.) Is action selection “the outcome of competition between response tendencies in the context of prefrontal biasing signals that represent drives and strivings for goals” ?
24.) Can not bottom-up sensory signals affect “the outcome of competition between response tendencies” if it is harder to inhibit a verbal response when you get a better match between a corresponding top-down sensory expectation and bottom-up sensory signals (several top-down sensory expectations must simultaneously be available) ?
25.) Are you able to integrate all features matching the sensory consequence you are about to produce when bottom-up sensory signals affect “the outcome of competition between response tendencies” and will this generate the informative event we call perception in response to a more or less distorted verbal message ?
26.) Can the lost ability to inhibit a verbal response serve the purpose of not letting an act of will interfere with the ability to select the gestures you need to use in response to a verbal message and will the lost ability to choose how you respond result in that you find it much harder to disregard the context you are exposed to and experience ?
27.) Are you able to use multiple sources of information, like when incongruent auditory and visual cues are used to generate the McGurk effect (a verbal illusion), because a competing task (what you are able to attend when you are trying to hear the voice you are about to produce) suppress the ability to choose how you respond ?
28.) Can covert speech with its sensory consequence heard in integration with all features matching a corresponding top-down sensory expectation, thanks to a tendency to produce a rather equivalent sensory consequence, be used to distinguish a verbal message while a sensitivity to the context you are exposed to and experience makes it possible to restore a more or less distorted verbal message ?
29.) Are stimuli to which you make the same response categorized when you hear the sensory consequence of a specific gesture in integration with all features matching a corresponding top-down sensory expectation (what you are able to hear more subjectively will in response to different stimuli sound alike) and can a sensitivity to the context you are exposed to and experience make it possible to categorize (and learn how to categorize) what you are able to distinguish in response to acoustically highly variable speech sounds ?
30.) Are people able to restore and better distinguish a verbal message when they lack the ability to inhibit a verbal response and with a short delay hear the sensory consequence of covert speech in integration with what they were able to select with a corresponding top-down sensory expectation ?
31.) Was Alvin M. Liberman more than 50 years ago correct in his assumption that “the articulatory movements and their sensory effects mediate between the acoustic stimulus and the event we call perception” ?
32.) Are you able to integrate all features matching the sensory consequence you are about to produce when bottom-up sensory signals affect the outcome of competition between response tendencies and will this generate the informative event we call perception in all of our senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell) ?
33.) Can the exposure to stimulus (non-verbal) – stimulus (verbal) contingencies (classical conditioning) when you with a short delay are able to restore a verbal message or interpret what subjectively seems to be a verbal message have such a profound effect that some people develop a mental illness ?
34.) Why am I the only one who writes about how the exposure to stimulus (non-verbal) – stimulus (verbal) contingencies when you with a short delay are able to restore a verbal message can generate a tendency to interpret what people normally ignore ?
35.) Can not the exposure to stimulus (non-verbal) – stimulus (verbal) contingencies (classical conditioning) when you with a short delay are able to restore a verbal message generate a tendency to interpret what people normally ignore ?
36.) Can not any signal that consistently precedes a meal, such as a clock indicating that it is dinnertime or an appetizer, cause us to feel hungrier than before the signal and can not un-patterned noise that consistently precedes a verbal illusion (information) like any signal that consistently precedes a meal become a conditioned reinforcer that can activate a drive representation ?
37.) Can not what you learn to expect in response to CS (un-patterned noise) trigger the need to access a verbal message (activate a drive representation) and can not the need to access a verbal message (information) motivate a verbal response which generates the informative event we call perception ?
38.) Is it possible to divide what may cause conditioned reinforcer(S –> D)/incentive motivational(D –> S) learning in four categories as follows: A.) What will make it necessary to restore a verbal message. B.) What will increase the exposure to more ambiguous voices. (It´s probably more common to expect to access a verbal message in response to non-verbal sounds which originates from a distorted maybe distant voice than in response to other environmental sounds and to expect to access a verbal message can motivate a verbal response which makes it possible to interpret un-patterned noise.) C.) What may increase the need to access a verbal message. D.) What will diminish our ability to predictively monitor the production of a sensory consequence ?
39.) Can all the factors that contribute to the development of an integration disorder referred to as schizophrenia be assumed to increase the exposure to the kind of stimulus (non-verbal) – stimulus (verbal) contingencies you are exposed to when you are able to restore a verbal message ?
40.) Can the need to restore a verbal message in a noisy environment, due to a hearing impairment or when volition and emotion make you listen to indistinct, maybe distant and hard to hear voices be assumed to trigger an integration disorder like this ?
41.) How do you explain “the fact that the incidence of schizophrenia increases consistently with increasing levels of urbanicity” (A and B?) ?
42.) Why are hearing impairments important risk factors for schizophrenia (A, B and C?) ?
43.) How do you explain the fact that belonging to an ethnic minority increases the risk of developing an integration disorder like this (C?) ?
44.) Can any difference which gives you the sense of not belonging in a social context cause an elevated risk of developing an integration disorder like this ?
45.) Can sensory deprivation and solitude, like starvation, trigger an internal drive to access what you need and will this generate a verbal behaviour which satisfies the need to access information ?
46.) Can sleep deprivation contribute to the development of an integration disorder referred to as schizophrenia because it diminishes the ability to focus on a specific task ?
47.) Are people, significantely deprived of their sleep, sometimes unable to adequately monitor the production of a sensory consequence because their ability to focus on a task like this has been diminished ?
48.) Will the ability to predictively monitor the production of a sensory consequence in competition for limited attentional resources no longer as well attenuate all features matching the sensory consequence you are about to produce because the ability to focus on a task like this has been diminished ?
49.) Can all features matching the sensory consequence you are about to produce in competition for limited attentional resources more effectively suppress the ability to inhibit a verbal response because the ability to focus on monitoring the production of a sensory consequence has been diminished ?
50.) Are people able to hear their own thoughts as alien voices because they are unable to attenuate all features matching the sensory consequence they are about to produce (their ability to focus on monitoring the production of a sensory consequence has been diminished), lack the ability to inhibit a verbal response and hear the sensory consequence of covert speech in integration with what they were able to select with a corresponding top-down sensory expectation ?
51.) Are you able to reveal a verbal illusion when you expect to hear the sensory consequence you are about to produce and all features matching what you expect to hear can be taken out of their peripheral existence without generating a match between a top-down sensory expectation and bottom-up sensory signals ?
52.) Will the ability to reveal a verbal illusion (a mismatch) result in that you lack the motivation to execute and are able to inhibit a verbal response?
53.) Can covert speech with its sensory consequence heard in integration with all features matching a corresponding top-down sensory expectation be blocked in the middle of a sentence because an increase in attention take all features matching what you expect to hear out of their peripheral existence without generating a match between a top-down sensory expectation and bottom-up sensory signals ?
54.) Can the sensory consequence you are about to produce during covert speech take on the value of what you are able to reveal as irrelevant and how can this be assumed to affect the emotional state of people who frequently reveals a verbal illusion instead of hearing their own thoughts as alien voices ?
55.) Can a tendency to reveal a verbal illusion be generated because you are trying really hard to hear the voice you are about to produce or because you are trying to avoid the voice you are about to produce by paying more attention to all features matching the voice you are about to produce (It is much harder to hear the voices you are trying to hear and I am able to use this to get rid of some of the voices I hear!) ?
56.) Will some people who learn to avoid their voices by paying more attention to what they are able to hear objectively eventually automatically pay more attention to all features matching whatever voice they are about to produce and can this be assumed to generate more negative symptoms in people who mostly hear the kind of voices they want to avoid ?
57.) Am I the only one who writes about how the ability to reveal a mismatch can generate negative symptoms like poverty of speech, affective flattening and avolition?
58.) Can not negative symptoms like poverty of speech, affective flattening and avolition be connected to our ability to reveal a mismatch ?
59.) Can the information you access in response to what you are able to hear more objectively act as a positive reinforcer and will the ability to reveal a verbal illusion during circumstances like these sometimes result in that un-patterned noise loses its power to motivate a behaviour which generates the informative event we call perception (Extinction: The occurrences of a conditioned response will eventually decrease or disappear when a conditioned reinforcer (un-patterned noise) no longer is paired with a primary reinforcer (information)!) ?
60.) Is it possible to understand how some people get rid of the voices they hear?
61.) Will some people who mostly hear the kind of voices they want to hear eventually lose their ability to hear these voices because they pay more attention to what they hear objectively (bottom-up sensory signals) and as a consequence more frequently are able to reveal a verbal illusion?
62.) Is it possible to affect what kind of voices people hear and by doing this help them to get rid of this illness ?
63.) Can verbal auditory hallucinations emerge as the result of stimulus (non-verbal) – stimulus (verbal) contingencies (classical conditioning) when you with a short delay are able to restore a verbal message while positive symptoms in all of our other senses (visual hallucinations etc) emerge due to a failure to block a neutral stimulus in compound with CS (un-patterned noise) ?
64.) Can a failure to block a neutral stimulus in compound with CS (attentional blocking) be the result of our ability to reveal a mismatch ?
65.) Can our ability to reveal a verbal illusion briefly switch our attention to a neutral event in one of our other senses and will a neutral event like this if it consistently precedes a reinforcer (the informative event we call perception) itself become a reinforcer?
66.) Can the ability to hear whatever you expect to hear in response to the context you are exposed to and experience gradually change the context you experience to a more subjective context ?
67.) Can the lost ability to discriminate relevant stimuli from irrelevant stimuli originate from our ability to restore a verbal message (Our ability to restore a verbal message rely on an ability to interpret irrelevant stimuli when we expect to access a verbal message and to frequently restore a verbal message may generate a tendency to interpret what people normally ignore) ?
68.) Do people naturally focus more on monitoring the production of a sensory consequence when it is the sensory consequence they produce overtly and can this be assumed to explain why people who constantly loses their ability to control covert speech often find it much easier to control overt speech?
69.) Are the frequently occurring loose associations I experience a characterizing feature of this illness which reflects how bottom-up sensory signals can affect “the outcome of competition between response tendencies in the context of prefrontal biasing signals that represent drives and strivings for goals”?
70.) Why is polydipsia (excessive fluid intake) associated with negative symptoms, disorganization and poor outcome ?
71.) Will some people who hear their own thoughts as alien voices develop polydipsia because an operant behaviour like alien covert speech is rewarded with information without entirely satisfying the need to access information (A hungry animal with access to water may if an operant behaviour is rewarded with food, but in too small amounts to satisfy its hunger, eventually develop polydipsia)?
72.) Is an operant behaviour like alien covert speech sometimes rewarded with information without entirely satisfying the need to access information because you are able to reveal a verbal illusion (to listen because you experience the need to access a verbal message may result in that you are able to reveal a verbal illusion and it is much harder to hear the voices you are trying to hear) or because bottom-up sensory signals affect the outcome of competion between response tendencies (How informative is a loose association?) ?
I have tried to understand how I am able to hear my own thoughts as alien voices and why I started to hear these voices.
These are some of the questions I ask myself:
What can we learn from people who hear their own thoughts as alien voices and in response to non-verbal environmental sounds are able to generate the perception of an external voice “that retain certain acoustic features that were present in the original signal”?
What if each and every one of us are able to use covert speech to generate the perception of an external voice “that retain certain acoustic features that were present in the original signal” when we need to restore and better distinguish a verbal message?
Can the gestures you are about to produce during covert speech when you are able to hear the sensory consequence of covert speech like the gestures you intend to produce during overt speech determine what you expect to hear and can a top-down sensory expectation like this be used to select all features matching the sensory consequence you are about to produce?
Are you able to hear the sensory consequence of covert speech in integration with what you were able to select with a corresponding top-down sensory expectation?
How are people able to hear their own thoughts out loud in response to un-patterned noise of a very low volume (what normally is unattended and below awareness)?
Is Treisman´s attenuation model correct in its claim that “paying attention to a message means increasing its subjective loudness”?
Can a previous exposure to a tone enable the perception of the same tone at a lower volume than otherwise would have been possible (Hemisfärernas musik, s.53, Jan Fagius) because you expect to hear the tone you were exposed to and are able to use what you expect to hear to select (pay attention to) all features matching the tone you were exposed to?
Can excessive attentional focus on all features matching a top-down sensory expectation substantially increase the subjective loudness of what you are able to select (peripheral features not otherwise brought to awareness) when you are trying to hear the voice you are about to produce and will the subjective loudness of what you are able to select determine the subjective loudness of the voice you are about to produce?
Is it harder to reveal a verbal illusion in response to un-patterned noise below a certain threshold and will this sometimes result in a tendency to interpret environmental or tinnitus-like sounds of a very low volume?
Why do people lose the ability to generate an act of will with which they are able to consciously control covert speech?
Is one of the most influential cognitive models of auditory verbal hallucinations correct in its claim that “a failure to adequately monitor the production of one’s own inner speech leads to verbal thought being misidentified as an alien voice”?
Are people who hear their own thoughts as alien voices forced to divide their attention between their ability to predictively monitor the production of a sensory consequence and what they are able to select with a corresponding top-down sensory expectation?
Do people more easily lose the ability to control covert speech and hear their own thoughts as alien voices because they are forced to divide their attention between two similar tasks?
Why am I the only one who uses a well known experience many people share (two similar tasks will often interfere with each other more than two different tasks) in an attempt to make it easier to understand the lack of voluntary control?
Will not what you are able to select, when you are trying to hear the voice you are about to produce, automatically correspond to some features matching the sensory consequence you are about to produce and can not the attention you devote to a competing task due to a similarity more effectively suppress the ability to control how you respond?
Why am I the only one who writes about how the exposure to stimulus (non-verbal) – stimulus (verbal) contingencies when you with a short delay are able to restore a verbal message can generate a tendency to interpret what people normally ignore?
Can not the exposure to stimulus (non-verbal) – stimulus (verbal) contingencies (classical conditioning) when you with a short delay are able to restore a verbal message generate a tendency to interpret what people normally ignore?
Can not any signal that consistently precedes a meal, such as a clock indicating that it is dinnertime or an appetizer, cause us to feel hungrier than before the signal and can not un-patterned noise that consistently precedes a verbal illusion (information) like any signal that consistently precedes a meal become a conditioned reinforcer that can activate a drive representation ?
Can not what you learn to expect in response to CS (un-patterned noise) trigger the need to access a verbal message (activate a drive representation) and can not the need to access a verbal message (information) motivate a verbal response which generates the informative event we call perception ?
Can the need to restore a verbal message in a noisy environment, due to a hearing impairment or when volition and emotion make you listen to indistinct, maybe distant and hard to hear voices be assumed generate a tendency to interpret what people normally ignore?
Research Suggestions / Random Insights
1. That total ambient sound (internal [ie. breathing, heartbeat, brain activity] and external [ie. traffic, birdsong, refrigerator]) may *cause* thought. specifically, ambient sound not consciously attended to may form a dissociated complex of thought system developing unawares, until breaking through into conscious thought-stream, in a similar way that we may unexpectedly hear the external counterpart of a highway we have been living close to for years, and never noticed, which then becomes a significant part of our consciously attended to soundscape.
2a. That a *type* of thinking (manner, archetypal substructure) we had once engaged in becomes no longer engaged in, yet retains the energic weight of an archetypal resonance which quietly, unheard, influences our dominant inner voicings, until an ego-weakening (in the Jungian sense of ego, not Freudian) experience (bolstering ‘Shadow’ component, or strengthening bond between Shadow and Anima) causes a dissolution of the dominant-(ego)-archetype integrity such that secondary and/or partly dissociated personality fragments erupt with close to (and sometimes greater than) equivalent intensity.
2b. That incidence of voice hearing within the (admittedly small) population where discontinued intensive Mantra recitation practice forms part of the history, may yield support for this thesis.
3a. That the development of complex language structure “voice-heard” may be studied (as in my case, for example, where over two years a clearly mappable growth pattern can be seen, with faithful recollection of oft repeated voicings traceable longitudinally and amenable to dissection as a growing system), and linguistic analysis of this development possible, resultant patterns which may be found to approximate the course of development of physiological virus forms.
3b. That is seems distinctly plausible such virus-like formations of a spreading/growing language system, particularly those developing with malignant identity/affect/tone, may be influential upon the human physical system (and vice versa), and whether or not they have broken forth into consciousness, such malignancy is conceivably implicated in the disease progression of other organic disturbance, notably similar to the insidious spreading of cancer.
3c. That graphic computational modelling of such language systems over the early period of lexicon expansion is feasible, with emphasis upon a mapping convention charting the linguistic network pattern and, analysing even relatively few individuals who have significant recall, examining for similarities in three and two dimensional developmental topography of structural change and growth, which may lead to a model of interaction between various voices, between voices and basal language structure, though of primary interest for ease of early research would be simple geometric structures discernable within the early stages of language patterning (that is, connections between prominant words used by the voices), with attendant possibility of early intervention by the introduction of linguistic “anti-viral” agents (akin to remedial Mantras) which disrupt the voices in preliminary growth phase.
4. That psychiatric interventions when used without supporting talk-therapy or equivalent “alternative” modes of addressing the underlying (apparant) components of the voices themselves, personal history, social structure the hearer is embedded in, archetypal array, meridian flow/blockage… without addressing the substance of the condition being treated phenomonologically, whatever the theoretical and treatment process preferred as remedying the intrapersonal conflict, is merely “a bandaid solution to an internal injury” and superficial approach, unlikely to yield long term relief and independence, but rather leverages bioreductionist prejudice in favour of subduing the hearer in a way that could be considered “globally disabling” wheras many “complementary” treatment protocols address the condition with great precision and subtlety, and should be rigourously pursued prior to, and at least in conjunction with, psychiatric procedures. Hence a thorough and exhaustive investigation of practices worldwide from throughout the ages must be undertaken for the sake of many suffering with malignant and/or disruptive voices, and hearers be given full and accurate information at the point of contact with psychiatric services, such that they may exert a choice over which treatments aside from psychiatry will be entered into to solve the uncomfortable dilemma, even if that involves choosing to live with voices and accomodate them into daily living rather than submit to drug treatments that many do and would consider, if they were able to truly exercise “informed consent”, worse to live with than the experience of hearing voices.
5. That there may be an overdiagnosis of “schizophrenia” based upon a sensationalising of the voice hearing phenomenon, and other aspects of the hearer’s life misread to appear part of this syndrome, such as merely radical or artistic dress construed as “poor hygeine”, or that preference for one’s own company may be read into the diagnosis as “social dysfunction”, even “self-employment” in one of the countless ways that retired people have the benefit of pursuing with impunity may be regarded if engaged in by a younger person as “occupational maladjustment”. These conclusions may be reached by general practitioners and psychiatrists alike when confronted by the voice hearing phenomena, for many reasons including the dominance of the trend of considering voice hearing to be (inaccurately) adequate symptomatically for the diagnosis of schizophrenia, with attendent fuzzy reasoning to “fill in the diagnostic blanks”, or because the clinician is not familiar with a growing culture of acceptance in the wider community regarding the ways in which many people live quite happily with voices, receiving non-medical treatments if any treatments at all, or because the person in question may be a genuinely passionate and/or politically radical individual with vivid imaginal life, of the “type” considered by the average conservative-ish doctor as being in need of some quietening therapy as part of the doctor’s self-assessed social/community obligation.
6. That the simple Zen/Ch’an practice of “breath attention” may yield surprisingly effective results when enacted by a voice hearer as a standalone technique of addressing the stress, anxiety and fatigue that can accompany voice hearing, and may be a treatment that, couched in non-religious terms without even mention of the word “meditation”, is calming and easy for anyone with minimal guidance and without supervision, enabling the presence of mind necessary to work out the intrapersonal problem for themselves, or with only minimum and non-invasive therapeutic intervention.
7. That when it comes to doctoring via physiological medicine, the cochlear feedback mechanism by which the auditory cortex send signals from the olivary body via the medial olivocochlear bundle to amplify internal sounds (similar to tinnitus) might be a place to look for dysfunction first, before considering the dopamine/seratonin system.
8. That it may be worthwhile therapeutically, to learn about the character of the voices heard and to develop a typology of their personalities as (semi-autonomous) beings, examining and collating information on these entities, in a similar way to diagnostic manuals elucidating (supposed) “types” of people who are not functioning in ways that are happy/content or without causing themselves or others suffering, to develop a complex profile of the types of “people” who people hearing voices have trouble with, in the forms of inner archetypal manifestations of apparant personness. Thus, we may begin to match the temperaments of actual people in a person’s life who may leave traces of resonance which are activated as pesky and/or persistent voices, with a view to assisting in developing strategies of the sort used if such characters were harrassing them in external/”real” form, and applying these coping tactics of interaction both with the internal figures and with external figures who may be found to act as “surrogate” and tangible characters with whom conflicts may be addressed and resolved.
Is it possible to affect the voice hearing experience in those who predominantly hear voices expressed with a negative emotional content?
Can the exposure to stimulus (non-verbal) – stimulus (verbal) contingencies (classical conditioning) when you with a short delay are able to restore a verbal message or interpret what subjectively seems to be a verbal message contribute to a tendency to interpret what people normally ignore?
To reward an operant behavior (covert speech) which generates the exposure to stimulus (non-verbal) – stimulus (verbal) contingencies (classical conditioning) like these may have such a profound effect that some people develop a mental illness…
Classical conditioning (also referred to as pavlovian or respondent conditioning) can be the result of stimulus (non-verbal) – stimulus (verbal) contingencies like these and may cause the need to access a verbal message in response to non-verbal environmental sounds while operant conditioning is the result of response – stimulus contingencies and what generates our ability to satisfy the need to access a verbal message. In other words to frequently be forced to restore a verbal message due to a hearing loss may cause the need to access a verbal message in response to non-verbal environmental sounds (1) and the need to access what you learn to expect can motivate a behaviour which satisfies the need to access a verbal message (2). (Hearing impairments are, as expected, important risk factors for schizophrenia…)
1.) Any signal that consistently precedes a meal, such as a clock indicating that it is time for dinner or an appetizer, may cause us to feel hungrier than before the signal because we learn to expect a meal in response to CS (CS will eventually predict the arrival of food) and non-verbal environmental sounds that consistently precedes a verbal illusion (information) can like any signal that consistently precedes a meal become a conditioned reinforcer that can activate a drive representation D.
2.) Operant or instrumental conditioning is a form of learning in which an individual’s behaviour is modified by its consequences and it involves learning to make a response in order to obtain a reward or avoid something unpleasant. What you learn to expect or predict in response to a signal that consistently precedes a reinforcer can motivate an operant behaviour which has been established and fine tuned because it satisfies the need to access what you learn to expect or makes it possible to avoid what you learn to expect.
People who mostly hear the kind of voices they want to hear may eventually lose their ability to hear these voices because they are able to reveal a verbal illusion (1) while some people who mostly hear the kind of voices they want to avoid learn to sometimes avoid the kind of voices they hear by paying more attention to what they are able to hear objectively (2) …
1.) Extinction: The occurrences of a conditioned response will eventually decrease or disappear when a conditioned reinforcer (un-patterned noise) no longer is paired with a primary reinforcer (information)!
2.) People who consistently avoid the event they fear will continue to expect a fearfull event (phobia) and people who selectively are able to avoid some of the voices they hear by revealing a mismatch will continue to expect to hear the voices they were able to avoid! To continue to expect to hear the voices you are able to avoid by revealing a verbal illusion may eventually generate negative symptoms like poverty of speech, affective flattening and avolition and to continue to expect to hear the voices you are trying to avoid will generate the voices you are trying to avoid whenever you are unable to reveal a verbal illusion. The allocation of processing resources from what generates the ability to consciously control covert speech to what you are able to attend with a corresponding top-down sensory expectation must be greater when you are trying to avoid a voice with a negative emotional content than when you are trying to restore a verbal message or interpret non-verbal environmental or tinnitus like sounds with no connection to a verbal message (not coexisting with or corresponding to a distorted verbal message) and avoidance may therefore also generate a more disorganized behavior.
“Non-clinical populations usually experience voices with a neutral or even positive emotional content” and to selectively be able to avoid some voices expressed with a negative emotional content may eventually generate a more unpleasant voice hearing experience, disorganization and negative symptoms.
An already stigmatized experience can be connected to some of what characterize an even more stigmatized illness, but most people who hear auditory hallucinations do not meet the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia!