Auditory hallucinations cover a variety of elementary experiences,
such as hearing noises or sounds, and complex experiences, such as
hearing music or voices. Complex auditory hallucinations are most
often characterized by the hearing of a voice or voices that are generally
called auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH). About 70% of patients with
schizophrenia and a variety of psychiatric and neurological patients suffer
from AVHs [1]. While literature on AVHs in psychiatric patients is extensive
[2–4], only a few reports are available on AVHs in neurological
patients [5–8].
Several functional and neural mechanisms have been proposed
to account for AVHs. Auditory verbal hallucinations have been attributed
to 1) aberrant perceptions of altered auditory processing [9];
2) language-related deficits such as a failure in self-attributing inner
speech (self-monitoring deficit) [10]; and 3) a memory deficit, i.e., abnormal
remembering of memories of speech [11], among others [12].
Neuroimaging studies in psychiatric patients have provided evidence