The Brain Bases of Phantom Auditory Phenomena: From Tinnitus to Hearing Voices

Abstract

The phenomenology and neural bases of phantom auditory perceptions are reviewed. A variety of phantom auditory phenomena are discussed, from tinnitus to hearing voices. It is claimed that the phenomenology or qualia of the hallucinatory experience may correspond to how the auditory system is organized into functional regions (neural architecture) and how auditory percepts are represented at the single neuron level within this system. There may be a one-to-one correspondence between the type of experience (e.g., hearing a tone versus hearing a voice) and the representational qualities or aspects of sound representation in different parts of the auditory and speech processing stream or system. The literature does not support the supposition that certain features of auditory hallucinations correspond to either neurological or psychiatric disease. Clinical aspects of auditory hallucinations also are discussed that may be of interest to clinical practitioners with patients who have auditory hallucinations.