Want to Understand Delusions? Listen to the People Who Have Them

Even hallucination, an ostensibly simpler category, may cover multiple distinct experiences. Nev Jones, a Pitt assistant professor of social work who herself has direct experience of psychosis, has found in her research that “auditory” hallucinations aren’t necessarily as auditory as people assume. In a 2015 paper, she and her colleagues reported that under half of people with auditory hallucinations actually experience them as voices. For others, they more closely resemble thoughts than sounds. The mistaken assumption that these hallucinations involve sound, Jones says, could lead neuroscience awry. Read more in WIRED.