Background: Auditory verbal hallucinations, which frequently involve negative emotions, are reliable symptoms of schizophrenia. Brain asymmetries have also been linked to the condition, but the relevance of asymmetries within the amygdala, which coordinates all emotional signals, to the content of and response to auditory verbal hallucinations has not been explored.
Methods: We evaluated the performance of two asymmetry biomarkers that were recently introduced in literature: the distance index, which captures global asymmetries, and a revised version of the laterality index, which captures left-right local asymmetries.