ABSTRACT
In contrast to many other contributors the title of this chapter was chosen by me (rather than being provided by the editors). I chose it to challenge all those people who are trying to develop animal models of schizophrenia. The kind of symptoms that interest me in particular-the delusions and the hallucinations-cannot be studied directly in mice or rats. They are disorders of consciousness1 that are only known about from the subjective reports of patients. This chapter focuses on the kinds of delusions where patients believe they are being controlled by external forces in some way. Interestingly, two big studies showed that the severity of delusions and hallucinations is not associated with impairments on typical neuropsychological tests.2,3 This observation suggests that the cognitive deficits associated with hallucinations and delusions are not tapped by standard tests of cognitive function.
