Abstract
Understanding the cognitive mechanisms involved in hearing voices – or auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) – is a stern but important challenge that requires multiple methodological approaches. Durham University’s Hearing the Voice project is an interdisciplinary group that have worked with a range of people with psychosis and AVH alongside “non-clinical” groups who describe frequent voice-hearing experiences. This talk will focus on some of this work, drawing upon two recent fMRI studies of language processing and reading, to understand how everyday processing of voices and inner speech may give rise to voices with their own vivid character and agency.