🚨 Scientists Confirm Schizophrenia’s “Voices” Are Misheard Thoughts
Neuroscience is finally decoding the thin line between inner dialogue and hallucination.
English · Español · Mental Health · Neuroscience
EN: Hyperrealistic MurmrX artwork showing the brain’s activity as inner speech is misheard as external “voices.”
ES: Arte hiperrealista de MurmrX que muestra la actividad cerebral cuando los propios pensamientos se confunden con “voces” externas.
By MurmrX Blog Editorial Team · November 2025
In a breakthrough that could reshape how we understand psychosis, neuroscientists have confirmed a long-suspected idea: the “voices” many people with schizophrenia hear are not mysterious external entities, but the brain mishearing its own thoughts.
The study, published in Schizophrenia Bulletin on October 21, 2025, shows that when inner speech is generated, the brains of people with schizophrenia often fail to tag it as “mine.” Instead, their auditory system reacts as if someone else is speaking to them.
How the Healthy Brain Tags Its Own Voice
Normally, when you silently “talk” in your head, your brain runs a predictive script. It sends a copy of the command — called a corollary discharge — to your sensory systems to warn them: “This sound is about to come from me.”
Because of this, the auditory cortex slightly dampens its response. It expects the sound, recognizes it as self-generated, and doesn’t treat it as a threat or surprise.
In schizophrenia, that internal tag breaks down. The brain hears its own inner speech — but experiences it as if it’s coming from someone else.
The Experiment: 142 Brains, One Big Pattern
Researchers at the University of New South Wales recruited 142 participants, including individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia who experience auditory hallucinations and people without such symptoms.
Using EEG (electroencephalography) to track brainwaves in real time, participants completed a simple but powerful task: they imagined saying a word while hearing that same word through headphones.
Here’s what happened:
- In people without hallucinations, the auditory cortex showed the expected dampening — the brain recognized the “voice” as self-related.
- In participants who regularly heard voices, the auditory cortex overreacted, lighting up as if the sound were unexpected and external.
This pattern suggests a failure in the brain’s prediction system: the brain doesn’t successfully warn itself that the incoming “voice” is internally produced, so it misclassifies it.
Why This Matters for Stigma and Treatment
For decades, auditory hallucinations have been wrapped in stigma and misunderstanding. This research sends a powerful message: schizophrenia is not about “weakness” or “possession” — it’s about a measurable neural glitch in how the brain labels its own activity.
That shift matters. When symptoms are seen as failures in prediction and tagging, not as moral or spiritual failings, it becomes easier to meet people with schizophrenia with empathy instead of fear.
"The brain is talking to itself — but it has forgotten that it’s the one speaking." — Paraphrased from the lead research team’s explanation
Opening the Door to Earlier Diagnosis
One of the most exciting implications of this work is prevention. If EEG patterns can reliably detect when the brain is failing to dampen inner speech, clinicians may be able to:
- Identify people who are at high risk of developing psychosis
- Monitor how well treatments restore normal prediction signals
- Develop new therapies that directly target this “self vs. other” confusion
This could transform schizophrenia from something we only respond to after a crisis into a condition we can detect and support much earlier.
What This Teaches Us About Consciousness
Beyond diagnosis, the study also reveals something beautifully human: the boundary between “self” and “other” is not a fixed wall — it’s a negotiation happening in the brain, moment by moment.
Most of the time, our brains get that negotiation right. But when prediction fails and inner speech is misfiled as “not me,” reality itself can begin to fracture. Understanding that process is the first step toward helping people stitch it back together.
Source: “Corollary Discharge Dysfunction to Inner Speech and its Relationship to Auditory Verbal Hallucinations in Patients with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders,” Schizophrenia Bulletin, 21 October 2025.
FAQ: Schizophrenia, Voices, and the Brain
- Are the voices in schizophrenia “real”?
- They feel absolutely real to the person experiencing them. But neurologically, this research suggests they are the brain misclassifying its own inner speech as an external voice.
- Does this mean people are just “imagining it”?
- No. The experience is genuine and often terrifying. The key is that the source is internal, but the brain’s prediction system is failing to label it correctly.
- Can EEG scans diagnose schizophrenia now?
- Not yet on their own. EEG is a research tool that helps scientists understand underlying mechanisms. In the future, similar brainwave patterns might be used alongside other clinical tools to support earlier, more precise diagnosis.
- What could treatment look like with this knowledge?
- Future therapies could focus on strengthening the brain’s ability to predict and tag self-generated thoughts — through medication, brain stimulation, cognitive training, or a combination.
Coming Soon on MurmrX
We’ll be diving deeper into how the brain blurs the border between reality and perception — from gaslighting and memory to déjà vu and dream logic. Bookmark MurmrX or follow our upcoming series on “The Psychology of Voices, Echoes, and Inner Narrators.”
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