Study links hearing voices in BPD to structural brain differences
Mar 7th 2026
MRI scans of women with borderline personality disorder show subtle gray matter reductions in language, sensory integration, and emotion regulation regions among those who hear voices, suggesting partly shared neural mechanisms with schizophrenia.
- Sample included 76 right-handed women: 20 BPD with auditory hallucinations, 26 BPD without hallucinations, and 30 healthy controls.
- Patients with BPD showed reduced gray matter volume in frontal and parietal lobes, cingulate cortex, and cerebellum compared with controls.
- Within BPD, people who heard voices had lower gray matter in occipital regions and the inferior frontal gyrus.
- Greater hallucination distress and severity correlated with lower gray matter in temporal, frontal, parietal regions and the cerebellum.
- Results overlap with findings from schizophrenia research and support a transdiagnostic neural basis for hallucinations.
- Study is cross-sectional, female-only, and cannot be used to infer causation or diagnose individuals