Fuentes‑Claramonte, PaolaSoler‑Vidal, JoanSalgado‑Pineda, PilarGarcía‑León, María ÁngelesRamiro, NuriaSanto‑Angles, AniolLlanos Torres, MaríaTristany, JosepGuerrero-Pedraza, AmaliaMunuera, JosepSarró, SalvadorSalvador, RaymondHinzen, WolframMcKenna, Peter J.Pomarol-Clotet, Edith2022-05-252022-05-252021Fuentes‑Claramonte P, Soler‑Vidal J, Salgado‑Pineda P, García‑León MA, Ramiro N, Santo‑Angles A, Llanos Torres M, Tristany J, Guerrero‑Pedraza A, Munuera J, Sarró S, Salvador R, Hinzen W, McKenna PJ, Pomarol‑Clotet E. Auditory hallucinations activate language and verbal short-term memory, but not auditory, brain regions. Sci Rep. 2021;11:18890. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-98269-12045-2322http://hdl.handle.net/10230/53234Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH, ‘hearing voices’) are an important symptom of schizophrenia but their biological basis is not well understood. One longstanding approach proposes that they are perceptual in nature, specifcally that they refect spontaneous abnormal neuronal activity in the auditory cortex, perhaps with additional ‘top down’ cognitive infuences. Functional imaging studies employing the symptom capture technique—where activity when patients experience AVH is compared to times when they do not—have had mixed fndings as to whether the auditory cortex is activated. Here, using a novel variant of the symptom capture technique, we show that the experience of AVH does not induce auditory cortex activation, even while real speech does, something that efectively rules out all theories that propose a perceptual component to AVH. Instead, we fnd that the experience of AVH activates language regions and/or regions that are engaged during verbal shortterm memoryapplication/pdfengThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2021EsquizofrèniaAl·lucinacions acústiquesMemòria immediatainfo:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-98269-1info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess