Dror Ben-Zeev, PhD, received a $2.3 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to fund a study that uses smartphone technology to better understand why experiencing auditory verbal hallucinations – hearing voices – can lead to significant distress, impairment, and need for care in some people, but not all.

The study will employ Research Domain Criteria (RDoC), a research framework that integrates many levels of information (from genomics to self-report) to better understand the full range of human behavior, from normal to abnormal. Auditory verbal hallucinations occur in the context of a range of mental health conditions (e.g. schizophrenia) as well as in individuals who are otherwise considered healthy. Using an integrated smartphone data collection system, participants will actively self-report when they are hearing voices as they occur in real-time while their smartphones passively collect activity and sensing data simultaneously. Researchers will combine both forms of data to examine the extent to which self-reported hallucinations and behavioral measures vary across people with and without the need for care. Findings may inform prevention strategies for people who are on the nonclinical end of the spectrum so they don’t progress, as well as inform more targeted treatments for individuals who already require treatment.

Ben-Zeev will partner with department faculty Carolyn Brenner, MD, Dave Atkins, PhD, and Jeff Munson, PhD, on this study as well as computer scientist Andrew Campbell, PhD, at Dartmouth College.