Garrison et al. (2015)

Paracingulate sulcus morphology is associated with hallucinations in the human brain

Nature Communications, 6(1)

Find It

DOI

Abstract

AbstractHallucinations are common in psychiatric disorders, and are also experienced by many individuals who are not mentally ill. Here, in 153 participants, we investigate brain structural markers that predict the occurrence of hallucinations by comparing patients with schizophrenia who have experienced hallucinations against patients who have not, matched on a number of demographic and clinical variables. Using both newly validated visual classification techniques and automated, data-driven methods, hallucinations were associated with specific brain morphology differences in the paracingulate sulcus, a fold in the medial prefrontal cortex, with a 1 cm reduction in sulcal length increasing the likelihood of hallucinations by 19.9%, regardless of the sensory modality in which they were experienced. The findings suggest a specific morphological basis for a pervasive feature of typical and atypical human experience.

Reference

Garrison, J. R., Fernyhough, C., McCarthy-Jones, S., Haggard, M., Carr, V., Schall, U., Scott, R., Jablensky, A., Mowry, B., Michie, P., Catts, S., Henskens, F., Pantelis, C., Loughland, C., & Simons, J. S. (2015). Paracingulate sulcus morphology is associated with hallucinations in the human brain. Nature Communications, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9956

What Rests on This

1 mechanism cites this source. Each finding below is quoted as it appears on that mechanism's own page.

Reality Monitoring Metacognition

Neural substrate

In 153 people with schizophrenia, hallucinations were linked to a shorter paracingulate sulcus, with each 1 cm reduction raising the likelihood of hallucinations by 19.9%, tying reality monitoring failure to the same medial prefrontal structure