Why Do Schizophrenics Hear Voices?

"You're always generating an internal voice and listening to it... But imagine now that you got the timing wrong. So you think you heard the voice before you generated it. You would have to interpret that as somebody else's voice," Eagleman told Science Friday host Ira Flatow. 

Eagleman's theory has some historical support. One study conducted in 1977 compared schizophrenics' perception of time to that of non-schizophrenics. Subjects were required to work on a task until an experimenter stopped them, and then were asked to estimate the amount of time that had transpired. At judging five-second intervals -- the briefest length of time tested -- schizophrenics significantly differed from the other subjects in their estimations.

Additional research is currently underway at Eagleman's Baylor College laboratory. If further substantiated, Eagleman believes that this theory could potentially lead to entirely new rehabilitative strategies for schizophrenia.

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2012/08/is-schizophrenia-simply-a-matter-of-time.html