Thresholds of tone signals of different duration were studied in 30 right-handed patients with paranoid schizophrenia and different forms of verbal hallucination. In hallucinating patients, as compared to a control gruop (non-hallucinating schizophrenics with a paranoiac syndrome), there was an asymmetry of detection thresholds for short-tone signals (from 10 msec or less) at the expense of an increase of thresholds in the right ear. In 2 patients with apparent left-handedness there was an asymmetry in the left ear. This asymmetry was marked in patients with genuine verbal hallucination. The authors discuss the relationship between verbal hallucination and mechanisms of inner speech, and the pathology of the audio-verbal zone in the temporal area of the dominant hemisphere.