Clinical Assessment

The PANSS was used to quantify patients’ clinical symptoms. Due to its relevance for the study hypothesis, the severity of SZ patients’ vulnerability to hallucinate was assessed with the PANSS P3 subscale³⁸. The P3 item assesses hallucinations in different modalities with a particular focus on auditory hallucinations and hearing voices, since these are the most common type of hallucination in psychotic patients. Therefore, this item provides a reasonable measure of hallucination severity in general, but the interview questions ascribed particular emphasis to AVH, that were evaluated to a greater extent than the other sensory modalities^39,40. Together with P3, we also considered the PANSS P1 subscale, as it assesses the severity of patients’ delusional thoughts. All PANSS raters were trained and certified, and satisfactory inter-rater reliability was documented. For all patients, PANSS data were collected on the day of the fMRI scanning.