Early Career Hallucinations Research Group

¿Alguien utiliza la versión en español del RBANS (“Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status”)? Si puede enviarnos un formulario original, con gusto le ofreceremos una compensación por ello.

Does anyone use the Spanish version of the RBANS ("Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status")? If you are able to send us an original form, we would be happy to compensate you for it.

How many versions of the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) exist? And how much does this affect research using the IGT? More than you might think. 🧵

So excited to see this lovely paper with @benjyb.bsky.social, @matanmazor.bsky.social and @giuliacabbai.bsky.social published in @nconsc.bsky.social!

academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

Humdinger of a preprint "When adjusting for lifetime ever-use of other substances, cannabis ever-use was no longer associated with PLEs, while methamphetamine use, cigarette use, and opioid use were associated with PLEs"

medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2025/12/02/2025.12.01.25341322.full.pdf

Comparing the characteristics of hallucinations and mental imagery: a large cross-sectional study in the general population Hallucinations (HAs), the perceptual experiences that occur without external stimuli, are classically associated with psychiatric disorders, but also …

Big study (n = 1,000+) examining the similarities/differneces between intrusive mental imagery and hallucinations in non-clinical participants: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

From a team including Catherine Bortolon, one of the co-leads of ECHR (but who I don't think is on bluesky).

<em>Journal of Sleep Research</em> | ESRS Journal | Wiley Online Library Sleep dysfunction can impair cognition and may play a causal role in the development of hallucinations. Deficits in cognitive control have been implicated in cognitive models of hallucinations. To be...

New paper from @georgiapunton.bsky.social's PhD. Sleep deprivation may increase risk of hallucinations through effects on intentional inhibition (ICIM performance) rather than performance of signal detection task performance.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

International Consortium on Hallucination Research Visit the post for more.

Save the Date: The next ICHR Satellite Meeting will be in Munich, Sep 21-24 2026!

Hosted by @franziskaknolle.bsky.social & co-organised with @echrhallucinations.bsky.social, this will be our 5th satellite meeting and first trip to Germany.

hallucinationconsortium.org

Immersive Virtual Reality–Assisted Therapy for Distressing Voices in Psychosis: Qualitative Study of Participants’ and Therapists’ Experiences in the Challenge Trial Background: Immersive virtual reality-assisted therapy (VRT) is a relational therapy for distressing voices in psychosis. Like AVATAR therapy (AT), VRT centres on therapist-facilitated dialogues with ...

Great qual paper on the Challenge RCT, which trialled VR-assisted relational therapy for distressing voices. Some interesting content about negative 'side effects' (i.e., very high levels of distress caused when continuing to attend despite what the voice wants): games.jmir.org/2025/1/e77920/

Postnatal Intrusive Thoughts and Psychotic-Like Experiences: Exploring Associations with Parenting Experiences and Mental Health - Community Mental Health Journal During the perinatal period, many parents experience mental health difficulties of varying severity, which have been associated with adverse outcomes. Examples include perinatal obsessive-compulsive d...

Paper on post-natal psychotic-like experiences in a reasonably large smaple (N = 346).

Almost certainly some useful data in here, but the data isn't open, so can't really tell.

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Hey folks! We're running a big repliCATS workshop in Melbourne on 16 Dec, evaluating of replicability of published papers.

🐈 metascience, psych, med, health, education, sociol, quant methods, stats ECRs welcome
💰 AU$200
🎫 + travel subsidies
ℹ️ forms.gle/9JvoRBKCzYyY...

Re-posts appreciated 🌈

** Recruiting a postdoc ** We are looking for a postdoc to work on emotion, mental health, and interoception, based in London at @ucl.ac.uk in my lab (Clinical and Affective Neuroscience). Part of a large Wellcome Grant (co-led with the brilliant @camillanord.bsky.social)

COSMIN systematic review and meta-analysis of the measurement properties of the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) Although the PANSS is the standard scale for schizophrenia symptom severity, its shortcomings regarding fundamental psychometric domains and practical applicability warrant the development of new scal...

Big (N = 1,262) paper from Brazil on some wekanesses of the PANSS - www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Chimes with the findings of this - www.thelancet.com/journals/ecl... - meta-analysis, if I understand it right.

Impact of avatar features and presence on treatment outcomes in virtual reality-assisted therapy for auditory hallucinations

sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920996425003949

Secondary analysis of data from the Challenge AVATAR therapy RCT reports weak/not-quite-there links between treatment outcomes and characteristics of the avatar (how closely the avatar resembled the voice patientsexperienced and the subjective sense of presence in the virtual environment)...

"In cross-sectional analyses auditory hallucinations such as "hearing mean voices" was associated with a marked greater risk of SA (RRR = 66.15, 95% CI, 46.78-93.53) compared to youths without auditory hallucinations."

Psychotic Experiences and Risk of Suicidality in Adolescents: Examining the Impact of Auditory Hallucinations in Longitudinal Study From a Large Nationwide Birth Cohort - PubMed This large longitudinal study documents that young people who report PE in pre-adolescent years, and especially auditory hallucinations with negative comments are associated with increased risk of suicidality in teenage years.

New paper using data from the Danish National Birth Cohort examined longitudinal association sbetween psychotic experiences and hospital contact relating to suicidal behaviour.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41159624/

...

Author changes name, publishes 10 papers in journals that banned him How to render a publishing ban moot? Change your surname and just keep submitting. That’s what happened in the case of Hashem Babaei, aka Hashem Gharababaei. In 2010, the Institution of Mechanical …

And then this: retractionwatch.com/2025/11/10/a...

The absolute nonsense some people get up to in academia never fails to amaze me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Two mind-blowing things from @retractionwatch.com First this: bsky.app/profile/retr...

To reform universities, first tackle global rankings Universities are in thrall to a rankings system that prioritizes narrow aspects of academic life. Three changes would give institutions the freedom to explore fresh ways of working.

Bit off-topic (sort-of), but a great piece from Lizzie Gadd critiquing current systems of university-rankings: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Relationships between trauma types and psychotic symptoms: A network analysis of patients with psychotic disorders in a large, multi-country study in East Africa The link between trauma exposure and psychotic disorders is well-established. Further, specific types of trauma may be associated with specific psycho…

Important paper form last year reporting a network analysis of associations between trauma types and psychotic symptoms in participants from East Africa. Exposure to a war zone was directly related to presence of visual halluciations: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Thanks for building such terrific resources! I attended a talk given by some people from your team a couple of years ago and it blew my mind it was so good. Really appreciate your organisation's work!

International Consortium on Hallucination Research Visit the post for more.

The ICHR Special Supplement 2025 is out!

New in Schiz Bull, find work from six of our international working groups, ft. new reviews on sleep dysfunction, cog development, psychedelics, cross-cultural comparisons, & the bodily self, plus the iMAPS 2 Imagery RCT!

hallucinationconsortium.org

Why should I support not-for-profit publishers/diamond open access journals? Traditional scientific publishing is a very lucrative business. For example, it has been reported that for-profit publishers (such as Elsevier, Springer-Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis) have pr…

Last blog post by me on Open Research. This time on the value of not-for-profit/diamond open access publishers: echr.group/2025/11/05/w...

Why should I use pre-prints? Traditional scientific publishing is slow and is often pay-walled. That is, there is normally a long delay between submitting your manuscript for publication and that manuscript being published (an…

Anotehr blog post from me re: open research. This time on pre-prints: echr.group/2025/10/31/w...

Not mentioned in that blog, but the folks @asapbio.bsky.social have a great resource on pre-printing here: asapbio.org/about/why-pr...

Exploring the Working Mechanisms between Anxiety, Mental Imagery and Auditory Verbal Hallucinations: A Longitudinal Study AbstractBackground. Auditory Verbal Hallucinations (AVHs) are the most common hallucinations within the psychosis spectrum and are often accompanied by anx

Interesting paper reports that mental imagery plays a role in the onset of AVH by eliciting anxiety - doi.org/10.1093/schi...

(Un)shared realities of psychosis treatment: An ethnographic study of (mis)alignment between psychiatrists and patients experiencing psychosis Delivering effective, compassionate psychiatric care that emphasizes meaningful exploration of patient perspectives remains a challenge for modern psy…

(Un)shared realities of psychosis treatment: An ethnographic study of (mis)alignment
between psychiatrists and patients experiencing psychosis...

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

... Just two posts left (on pre-printing and diamond OA/not-for-profit publishing).

Why should I share my data? Open data refers to free, unrestricted, sharing of data collected for a study with everyone/anyone. For example, a researcher might post the study collected in their study on something like Figshar…

Yet another blog post from me on open research. this time about open sharing of data. Why we should do it, and why we sometimes can't - echr.group/2025/10/23/w... ...

Pretty big (almost 200 patients) study on cognitive and neuro correlates of performance on a face pareidolia task in Lewy Body dementia: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....