New research reveals that the brain's failure to self-monitor motor signals plays a key role in schizophrenia-related hallucinations, offering fresh insights into the mechanisms behind these perceptual distortions. Study: Impaired motor-to-sensory transformation mediates auditory hallucinations. Image Credit: PeopleImages.
com / Yuri A / Shutterstock.com In a recent study published in the journal PLOS Biology , researchers investigate how impaired self-monitoring linked to dysfunctions in motor signal copies contributes to auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia. Perception vs.
reality Our perceptions about the surrounding environment originate from external sensory stimuli like sights, sounds, imagination, and recalling memories. Monitoring the different sources of these perceptions is vital, with hallucinations arising when these fail, and the brain is unable to separate the source from the perception. This self-monitoring of different sources of perception is achieved through internal forward models, in which copies of motor signals such as corollary discharge (CD) or efference copy (EC) are involved in inhibiting or enhancing sensory processing.
These copies of motor signals either enhance or suppress sensory processing, which allows internally generated sensations to be distinguished from external sensory stimuli. In mental health diseases like schizophrenia, patients often experience auditory hallucinations. Recent evidence suggests that distinct dysfunctions in CD and .