Not enough pleasure? Influence of hallucination proneness on sensory feedback processing of positive self-voice

Abstract

Ample research explored changes in sensory feedback processing of the self-voice as well as the control of attention allocation in voice hearers, including both non-clinical voice hearers and voice hearers with a psychotic disorder. While the attentional bias toward negative emotional information in voice hearers with a psychotic disorder due to heightened sensitivity towards threat/danger is well established, it remains unclear how positive emotion captures or controls attention. Manipulating the certainty of sensory feedback to the self-voice, transitioning from fully neutral to entirely positive (100% neutral, 60-40% neutral-pleasure, 50-50% neutral-pleasure, 40-60% neutral-pleasure, 100% pleasure), provides an opportunity to investigate attentional control and sensory feedback processing in positive self-voice as a function of hallucination proneness (HP). Participants with different HP scores self-generated and passively listened to their own voices during EEG recordings. N100 or P200 responses to self-generated and externally-generated self-voices did not differ. Further, HP did not modulate N100/P200 responses. These null findings might result from the minimal perceptual discriminability among the five types of voices varying in pleasure content. This might have led to less variation in certainty regarding the sensory feedback to self-voice, and consequently a lack of differential engagement of attentional resources. The lack of a global N100 suppression effect prompts inquiry into the association of sense of ownership/agency and pleasure.