Sound and Vision
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Sound and Vision: A collaboration between service-users, artists and the public to explore the lived experience of hallucinations
IRAS ID
269849
Contact name
John Suckling
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust and University of Cambridge
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
NCT04399096, ClinicalTrails.gov
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
Hallucinations are perceptions of stimuli that do not exist in the physical world, and can occur in psychiatric, neurological and neurodegenerative conditions, and among the general population. But what is it like to experience hallucinations? And is the experience of hallucinations the same for patients with different disorders, and people without a diagnosis? There is strong historical and anecdotal evidence that the quality of hallucinations is in fact very different, and we have recently shown that the brain imaging evidence points towards entirely separate brain mechanisms for the experience of hallucinations in schizophrenia and neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s (PD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). It is therefore possible that the lived experience of hallucinations is an indicator of the specific brain mechanisms involved. By exploring the many different experiences of hallucinations, we can reduce the stigma of these experiences that challenge our perception of reality.
This project will pair local artists with patients who have hallucinations to create art pieces that represent their hallucinatory experiences. Patients with diagnoses of schizophrenia and PD will be invited to take part in participating NHS clinics. Patients will meet with artists on two occasions who will then develop the piece, which may be a painting, drawing, or other media jointly selected.
Completed artworks will be exhibited at UK science festivals. The exhibition will be accompanied by researchers explaining the brain science of hallucinations, recordings of patients and artists, booklets cataloguing the exhibition, and art materials available for artistic expression of attendees’ own experiences. A digital compendium of the artworks and supporting material will be publicly available alongside the opportunity to complete an online survey collecting information on personal experiences giving us a platform to begin to improve our understanding of the diversity of hallucination-like experiences in the general population.
REC name
London - Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/LO/0420
Date of REC Opinion
27 Jul 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion