Hallucinatory phenomena have held the fascination of science since the dawn of medicine, and the popular imagination from the beginning of recorded history. Their study has become a critical aspect of our knowledge of the brain, making significant strides in recent years with advances in neuroimaging, and has established common ground among what normally are regarded as disparate fields. The Neuroscience of Hallucinations synthesizes the most up-to-date findings on these intriguing auditory, visual, olfactory, gustatory, and somatosensory experiences, from their molecular origins to their cognitive expression. In recognition of the wide audience for this information among the neuroscientific, medical, and psychology communities, its editors bring a mature evidence base to highly subjective experience. This knowledge is presented in comprehensive detail as leading researchers across the disciplines ground readers in the basics, offer current cognitive, neurobiological, and computational models of hallucinations, analyze the latest neuroimaging technologies, and discuss emerging interventions, including neuromodulation therapies, new antipsychotic drugs, and integrative programs. Among the topics covered: Hallucinations in the healthy individual. A pathophysiology of transdiagnostic hallucinations including computational and connectivity modeling. Molecular mechanisms of hallucinogenic drugs. Structural and functional variations in the hallucinatory brain in schizophrenia. The neurodevelopment of hallucinations. Innovations in brain stimulation techniques and imaging-guided therapy. Psychiatrists, neurologists, neuropsychologists, cognitive neuroscientists, clinical psychologists, and pharmacologists will welcome The Neuroscience of Hallucinations as a vital guide to the current state and promising future of their shared field.

Each year, some two million people in the United Kingdom experience visual hallucinations. Infrequent, fleeting visual hallucinations, often around sleep, are a usual feature of life. In contrast, consistent, frequent, persistent hallucinations during waking are strongly associated with clinical disorders; in particular delirium, eye disease, psychosis, and dementia. Research interest in these disorders has driven a rapid expansion in investigatory techniques, new evidence, and explanatory models. In parallel, a move to generative models of normal visual function has resolved the theoretical tension between veridical and hallucinatory perceptions. From initial fragmented areas of investigation, the field has become increasingly coherent over the last decade. Controversies and gaps remain, but for the first time the shapes of possible unifying models are becoming clear, along with the techniques for testing these. This book provides a comprehensive survey of the neuroscience of visual hallucinations and the clinical techniques for testing these. It brings together the very latest evidence from cognitive neuropsychology, neuroimaging, neuropathology, and neuropharmacology, placing this within current models of visual perception. Leading researchers from a range of clinical and basic science areas describe visual hallucinations in their historical and scientific context, combining introductory information with up-to-date discoveries. They discuss results from the main investigatory techniques applied in a range of clinical disorders. The final section outlines future research directions investigating the potential for new understandings of veridical and hallucinatory perceptions, and for treatments of problematic hallucinations. Fully comprehensive, this is an essential reference for clinicians in the fields of the psychology and psychiatry of hallucinations, as well as for researchers in departments, research institutes and libraries. It has strong foundations in neuroscience, cognitive science, optometry, psychiatry, psychology, clinical medicine, and philosophy. With its lucid explanation and many illustrations, it is a clear resource for educators and advanced undergraduate and graduate students.

Hallucinations, for most people, imply madness. But there are many different types of non-psychotic hallucination caused by various illnesses or injuries, by intoxication--even, for many people, by falling sleep. From the elementary geometrical shapes that we see when we rub our eyes to the complex swirls and blind spots and zigzags of a visual migraine, hallucination takes many forms. At a higher level, hallucinations associated with the altered states of consciousness that may come with sensory deprivation or certain brain disorders can lead to religious epiphanies or conversions. Drawing on a wealth of clinical examples from his own patients as well as historical and literary descriptions, Oliver Sacks investigates the fundamental differences and similarities of these many sorts of hallucinations, what they say about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture's folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all.

The work aims to provide an overview of the field of contemporary hallucinations research. It will consist of 28 chapters, the writing of which will be put out to international experts specialized in the specific fields at hand. The work aims to be unique, in that it intends to cover many different types of hallucination, and to approach the subject matter from four different perspectives, i.e., conceptual, phenomenological, neuroscientific, and therapeutic.

Neuropsychology has become a very important aspect for neurologists in clinical practice as well as in research. Being a specialized field in psychology, its long history is based on different historical developments in brain science and clinical neurology. In this volume, we want to show how present concepts of neuropsychology originated and were established by outlining the most important developments since the end of the 19th century. The articles of this book that cover topics such as aphasia, amnesia and dementia show a great multicultural influence due to an editorship and authorship that spans all developmental initiatives in Europe, Asia, and America. This book gives a better understanding of the development of higher brain function studies and is an interesting read for neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, neurosurgeons, historians, and anyone else interested in the history of neuropsychology.

Inner speech lies at the chaotic intersection of several difficult questions in contemporary philosophy and psychology. On the one hand, these episodes are private mental events. On the other, they resemble speech acts of the sort used in interpersonal communication. Inner speech episodes seem to constitute or express sophisticated trains of conceptual thought but, at the same time, they are motoric in nature and draw on sensorimotor mechanisms for speech production and perception more generally. By using inner speech, we seem to both regulate our bodily actions and gain a unique kind of access to our own beliefs and desires. Inner Speech: New Voices explores this familiar and yet mysterious element of our daily lives, bringing together contributions from leading philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. In response to renewed interest in the general connections between thought, language, and consciousness, these leading thinkers develop a number of important new theories, raise questions about the nature of inner speech and its cognitive functions, and debate the current controversies surrounding the 'little voice in the head.'

A hallucination, in the broadest sense, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid, substantial, and located in external objective space. The latter definition distinguishes hallucinations from the related phenomena of dreaming, which does not involve wakefulness. This new book gathers and presents research from around the globe in the study of hallucinations including the origin of hallucinations, auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenic patients, Charles Bonnet Syndrome, as well as hallucinations and suicide risk and the neurobiological basis of hallucinations.