Clinical Research Directory

The ECHO Study: Compassion-focused Therapy for Young Voice Hearers and Their Caregivers

In this project, a 10-session treatment program was developed aimed at young people who experience voice hearing. The treatment has potential to easily be implemented in everyday clinical practice in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and eventually in Educational Psychological Counselling (PPR) and the newly established STIME services (low-threshold municipal treatment offers for children and young people). As part of the treatment, the young person's caregivers are involved. This means a high degree of involvement from adults who know the young person well and are part of their daily life. In addition to traditional Compassion-focuced therapy (CFT), the treatment is expanded with an intervention where an audio file is recorded with content corresponding to the adolescent's voice hearing. The parents are invited to listen to the audio file while participating in a therapy session. This will help improve the caregivers understanding of the young person's experiences and challenges.

Role of Inferior Colliculi in Auditory Hallucinations

The neural basis of auditory hallucinations (AH) in patients with schizophrenia is poorly characterized. Functional imaging studies investigate either the "state" dimension (i.e., the measurement of changes in brain area activation at the precise moment of AH onset) or the "trait" dimension (i.e., the neural correlates of the propensity to hallucinate). A corollary of AH (particularly acoustic-verbal) is the activation of brain regions involved in the auditory perception of speech (auditory cortex). One theory is that patients with schizophrenia with AH may have a deficit in processing their internal speech (i.e., external attribution to internal verbal content). However, there is little clinical data on the specific role of the mesencephalic region of the inferior colliculi (IC) in the formation of these symptoms. Preliminary research has shown intense expression of dopamine D2 receptors, particularly on glutamatergic neurons in mouse ICs. Thus, ICs receive numerous inhibitory dopaminergic inputs, likely involved in signal optimization and modulation. The study authors hypothesize that AHs are the result of a defect in signal inhibition by the IC, which lose their function as perceptual filters.

Toward a Computationally-Informed, Personalized Treatment for Hallucinations

Auditory hallucinations are among the most distressing aspects of psychotic illness, and between 10 and 30% of people with hallucinations do not respond to antipsychotic medications. The authors have used computational modeling of behavior to link brain activity to development of auditory hallucinations in the hope of guiding new treatment development. The proposed studies take the first step toward individualized treatment approaches to hallucinations by attempting causal, pharmacological manipulation of relevant model parameters underlying these phenomena.

The Effectiveness of Combining AR/VR Technology in Virtual Clinical Auditory Hallucinations on the Comprehensive Auditory Hallucination Nursing Competency of Psychiatric Nurses

This study aims to develop and evaluate a Virtual Reality (VR) Auditory Hallucination Program to enhance psychiatric nurses' comprehensive care competence in managing auditory hallucinations among patients with schizophrenia. Given that 60-80% of patients on the schizophrenia spectrum experience auditory hallucinations, and many continue to do so despite medication, improving nurses' professional skills in this area is critical. The research is conducted in two phases across four psychiatric institutions. Phase one involves the development and validation of the VR program and an OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination), piloted with five participants and evaluated by psychiatric nursing experts. Phase two is a formal interventional study with 200 psychiatric nurses, using block randomization and three data collection time points. Assessment tools include five instruments measuring nurses' confidence, knowledge, attitude, empathy, immersion, and care performance related to auditory hallucinations. The study expects to strengthen nurses' ability to assess and manage auditory hallucinations effectively, and proposes the VR program as a potential tool for nursing in-service education.

VR-based Avatar Therapy for Treatment of Auditory Hallucinations

The primary aim of this study is to evaluate the safety and efficacy of AVATAR therapy, developed to address residual auditory hallucinations persisting despite medication in schizophrenia spectrum disorder. The intervention aims to reduce the intensity and frequency of these symptoms, as well as alleviate associated depressive and anxiety symptoms, using a virtual reality (VR)-assisted intervention developed for this purpose by the Danish company HEKA VR. The study will be a pre-post non-invasive, waiting list-controlled study, enrolling 30 patients from three clinical sites (Hungary, Spain, Poland). The study centers around administering therapy based on VR over a 12-week period, comprising a total of 7 sessions. These sessions are conducted individually and last 50 minutes each. The psychotherapist leading the sessions adheres to a strict protocol defined by the method's developers. During the intervention, VR technology is used to simulate the source of distressing auditory hallucinations. The therapist facilitates coping with these experiences externalized in this way through simulated conversations, supporting the development of more adaptive responses. Patients undergo a comprehensive cross-sectional evaluation of their condition before and after the intervention, including assessments of symptom severity, quality of life, and their experience with the method. The intervention is conducted with constant monitoring for possible adverse effects.

fMRI-based Neurofeedback to Relieve Drug-resistant Auditory Hallucinations

The INTRUDE trial aims at assessing the efficacy of an fMRI-based neurofeedback procedure on drug-resistant auditory hallucinations. Hallucinations are complex and transient mental states associated with subtle and brain-wide patterns of activity for which we were recently able to validate an fMRI multivariate decoder. Based on this progress, we can track patients' hallucinatory status using real-time fMRI. We will test whether schizophrenia patients with drug-resistant hallucinations can be trained to maintain the brain state associated with a no-hallucination condition using appropriate strategies and thus reduce overall severity. We will refer to a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled design. A total of 86 patients will be enrolled and equally split in an active neurofeedback group (n=43) and a sham group (n=43), matched for sex, age and PANSS scores. Each patient will benefit from 4 runs of either active or sham neurofeedback. The primary outcome measure will be the mean decrease of AHRS scores relative to baseline, and at 1 month post-treatment. We expect significant clinical benefits from fMRI-based neurofeedback on drug-resistant hallucinations compared with the sham group.