PhD Defence Hanna Sophie Honcamp

Keywords: Hallucination Proneness, Temporal dynamics, Resting state, Hidden Semi-Markov Models
 

"The restless brain: Investigating temporal dynamics of spontaneous brain activity and their impact on hallucinatory vulnerability"

This thesis investigated the neural underpinnings of hallucination proneness, the vulnerability to experience hallucinations, in the general population. To this end, a novel computational modelling approach was introduced that is particularly sensitive to the fast temporal dynamics of spontaneous brain activity, i.e., task- and stimulus-independent brain activity. The novel approach was found to be suitable to reveal new insights into the individual variability in hallucination proneness: Individuals who are more prone to hallucinations show distinct spontaneous brain dynamics as compared to those individuals who are less prone to hallucinations. The novel computational modelling approach was further tested for reliability and robustness, suggesting that it is feasible to analyse subtle neural changes underlying non-clinical hallucination proneness. The findings suggests that non-clinical hallucination proneness is linked to attention directed inward and an increased tendency to increase in stimulus- and task- unrelated thoughts, or mind wandering. 

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