https://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by a lowered mood and loss of interest, contributing not only to difficulties in academic and professional life but also as a major cause of suicide in South Korea. However, there are currently no objective biological markers that can be used for diagnosis or treatment. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-depression-immune-imbalance-brain-chemistry.html Thu, 20 Nov 2025 11:31:03 EST news682860661 A new study led by psychologists from UNSW Sydney has provided the strongest evidence yet that auditory verbal hallucinations—or hearing voices—in schizophrenia may stem from a disruption in the brain's ability to recognize its own inner voice. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-brainwave-voices.html Tue, 21 Oct 2025 00:00:04 EDT news680190936 Copenhagen University Hospital's VIRTU Research Group reports that an immersive virtual reality-assisted therapy called Challenge-VRT yielded a statistically significant, short-term reduction in auditory verbal hallucination severity among Danish adults with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-07-virtual-reality-therapy-voice-hallucinations.html Wed, 23 Jul 2025 06:50:02 EDT news672467754 Tissue staining is a cornerstone of medical diagnostics, used to highlight cellular structures and render tissue features visible under an optical microscope—critical for identifying diseases such as cancer. Traditionally, this process involves applying chemical dyes, like hematoxylin and eosin (H&E), to thinly sliced tissue samples. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-06-digital-opinion-autonomous-ai-hallucinations.html Tue, 17 Jun 2025 11:24:28 EDT news669378265 Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are severe mental disorders that often manifest in early adulthood. Effective treatments exist, but they require an accurate diagnosis—something that is more challenging than one might expect. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-02-ai-aid-diagnosis-schizophrenia-bipolar.html Mon, 24 Feb 2025 16:32:01 EST news659637116 The chromosomal disorder 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q) has emerged as one of the strongest risks for schizophrenia. Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital identified malformed regions of the cerebellum in laboratory models and patients with 22q and found that these malformations were caused by improper skull formation. Further, the researchers linked the skull malformation to the loss of one gene: Tbx1. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-12-genetic-schizophrenia-linked-malformed-skull.html Thu, 05 Dec 2024 14:20:12 EST news652630802 Auditory hallucinations are likely the result of abnormalities in two brain processes: a "broken" corollary discharge that fails to suppress self-generated sounds, and a "noisy" efference copy that makes the brain hear these sounds more intensely than it should. That is the conclusion of a study published October 3 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Xing Tian, of New York University Shanghai, China, and colleagues. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-brain-scan-person-schizophrenia-voices.html Thu, 03 Oct 2024 14:00:02 EDT news647163442 Reduced brain activity responding to unpredicted visual changes is a marker of psychosis in Parkinson's disease and a potential therapeutic target. Researchers at the IoPPN used electroencephalography (EEG) to observe participant's brain activity when presented with these visual cues. The aim is to determine whether visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) can be used to distinguish PD with visual hallucinations and PD without. The work is published in the journal Brain Communications. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-visual-mismatch-negativity-mechanism-parkinson.html Tue, 01 Oct 2024 11:28:44 EDT news647000912 If you had to estimate the number of people in a room, without counting them one by one, by nature you would overcount them. That's because—simply put from a Darwinian perspective of how we have evolved—it's better to overcount potentially harmful agents and predators than to underestimate them. This overcounting social behavior is shown to be true in humans as well as animals. It's certainly better to detect too many tigers (even if absent) during a jungle excursion than to miss a hungry one. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-03-invisible-presences-hijack-social-brain.html Tue, 12 Mar 2024 06:00:01 EDT news629393100 An intensive meditation-based intervention (iMI) significantly improves positive symptoms, particularly refractory hallucinations and delusions, in male patients with schizophrenia, according to a study published online on Feb. 6 in Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-02-intensive-meditation-intervention-ameliorate-schizophrenia.html Wed, 14 Feb 2024 13:37:02 EST news627140221 A team of neuroscientists and psychologists at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, working with a colleague from University Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, LPNC, has found that it is possible to induce auditory hallucinations in mentally healthy people without using drugs. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-10-auditory-hallucinations-lab-environment-drugs.html Mon, 23 Oct 2023 09:03:37 EDT news617270614 Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic, inflammatory skin disorder that has well-established associations with depression and anxiety. A new Yale School of Medicine study, published in Archives of Dermatological Research, finds AD is also associated with increased risk for schizophrenia and shizoaffective disorder. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-08-atopic-dermatitis-schizophrenia-schizoaffective-disorder.html Tue, 01 Aug 2023 12:24:02 EDT news610111441 Have you ever felt the strong sensation that someone is behind you, so intense that you turn around, only to see that no-one is there? This is a "presence hallucination." Presence hallucinations are particularly frequent but under reported in patients with Parkinson's disease and may appear early on in the course of the disease. They are sometimes ignored by the patient, by clinicians, or brushed off as a simple side-effect of medication. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-06-presence-hallucinations-early-predictor-cognitive.html Thu, 29 Jun 2023 11:00:05 EDT news607252424 Hallucinations are often depicted in the movies as terrifying experiences. Think Jake Gyllenhaal seeing a monstrous rabbit in Donnie Darko, Leonardo DiCaprio experiencing the torture of Shutter Island, Natalie Portman in Black Swan, or Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-hallucinations-movies-tend-chaos-violence.html Wed, 24 May 2023 14:10:04 EDT news604154719 Some patients can have vivid and detailed sexual hallucinations during anesthesia with sedative-hypnotic drugs like propofol, midazolam, diazepam and nitrous oxide. Some make suggestive or sexual comments or act out, such as grabbing or kissing medical professionals or touching themselves in a sexual way. Others awaken erroneously believing they were sexually assaulted. Why does this happen? https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-anesthesia-disturbing-sexual-hallucinations-psychological.html Wed, 24 May 2023 10:20:03 EDT news604141836 Strategies to treat pain without triggering dangerous side effects such as euphoria and addiction have proven elusive. For decades, scientists have attempted to develop drugs that selectively activate one type of opioid receptor to treat pain while not activating another type of opioid receptor linked to addiction. Unfortunately, those compounds can cause a different unwanted effect: hallucinations. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-05-discovery-route-safer-pain-medications.html Wed, 03 May 2023 11:00:04 EDT news602324784 Families of those with serious mental health issues feel stigmatized and alone, say York University researchers in a new study. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-04-family-members-mental-illness-stigmatized.html Thu, 27 Apr 2023 12:34:33 EDT news601817668 Using a non-invasive stimulation on the brain may be effective in reducing the frequency of visual hallucinations in blind patients, a new study has found. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-09-visual-cortex-hallucinations-patients.html Fri, 30 Sep 2022 10:08:09 EDT news583751276 A 6-year-old boy began hearing voices coming from the walls and the school intercom telling him to hurt himself and others. He saw ghosts, aliens in trees, and colored footprints. Joseph Gonzalez-Heydrich, MD, a psychiatrist at Boston Children's Hospital, put him on antipsychotic medications and the frightening hallucinations stopped. Another child, at age 4, had hallucinations with monsters, a big black wolf, spiders, and a man with blood on his face. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-08-psychotic-symptoms-children-genetic.html Wed, 24 Aug 2022 00:00:03 EDT news580492955 Scientists have developed artificial intelligence software that can create proteins that may be useful as vaccines, cancer treatments, or even tools for pulling carbon pollution out of the air. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07-biologists-ai-medicines-vaccines.html Thu, 21 Jul 2022 16:04:09 EDT news577638245 Being able to recognize our own voice is a critical factor for our sense of control over our speech, according to a study by researchers at the University of Tokyo. If people think they hear someone else's voice when they speak, they do not strongly feel that they caused the sound. This could be a clue to understanding the experience of people who live with auditory hallucinations and could help to improve online communication and virtual reality experiences. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07-exploring-link-voice.html Tue, 05 Jul 2022 12:32:03 EDT news576243121 For the past several decades, psychedelics have been widely stigmatized as dangerous illegal drugs. But a recent surge of academic research into their use to treat psychiatric conditions is spurring a recent shift in public opinion. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-03-ai-psychedelic-regions-brain-route.html Thu, 17 Mar 2022 07:51:20 EDT news566722275 The period after birth of a child is supposed to be a time of great happiness for women. However, a significant number of new mothers will experience a mental illness at this time. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11-postnatal-psychosis-rare-symptoms-mom.html Thu, 11 Nov 2021 09:20:01 EST news555844241 University of Leicester psychologists have, for the first time, created body-maps of the sensations that arise during hallucinations in people experiencing psychosis. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-10-psychologists-first-ever-body-maps-hallucinations.html Wed, 27 Oct 2021 16:07:26 EDT news554569640 Schizophrenia, which can cause disrupted thought and mood, delusions and hallucinations, is among the most debilitating mental disorders and the most mysterious. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-09-synaptic-dysfunction-schizophrenia.html Fri, 24 Sep 2021 08:02:26 EDT news551689330 EPFL scientists are developing a completely new 'brain stress test' for evaluating the mental status of patients with Parkinson's disease, the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disease worldwide. It involves awakening the 'ghosts' hidden in specific networks of the brain to predict the onset of hallucinations. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04-awakening-ghosts-patients-parkinson-powerful.html Wed, 28 Apr 2021 14:00:08 EDT news538825835 The humble lab mouse has provided invaluable clues to understanding diseases ranging from cancer to diabetes to COVID-19. But when it comes to psychiatric conditions, the lab mouse has been sidelined, its rodent mind considered too different from that of humans to provide much insight into mental illness. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04-mice-hallucination-like-behaviors-reveal-insight.html Thu, 01 Apr 2021 14:00:02 EDT news536481074 Some people have lost their eyesight, but they continue to 'see.' This phenomenon, a kind of vivid visual hallucination, is named after the Swiss doctor Charles Bonnet, who described in 1769 how his completely blind grandfather experienced vivid, detailed visions of people, animals and objects. Charles Bonnet syndrome, which appears in those who have lost their eyesight, was investigated in a study led by scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The findings, published today in Brain, suggest a mechanism by which normal, spontaneous activity in the visual centers of the brain can trigger visual hallucinations in the blind. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-brain-mechanism-underlying-vision-revealed.html Thu, 07 Jan 2021 11:18:21 EST news529240693 Cognitive neuroscientists from UNSW Sydney say if we really want to understand and treat the pathological hallucinations that affect people with physical and mental illnesses, the best place to start is in the laboratory. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-12-hallucinations-lab-key-treatment.html Tue, 15 Dec 2020 08:58:23 EST news527245102 A new study from researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons has found evidence of a potential neurobiological mechanism for hallucinations and delusions that fits within the hierarchical model of psychosis and can explain their clinical presentation. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-11-evidence-neurobiological-mechanism-hallucinations-delusions.html Mon, 09 Nov 2020 15:54:47 EST news524159682