Psychiatry Research
April 13, 2016
Emma-Louise Jay, Steffen Nestler, Mauricio Sierra et al.
Case reports and an open trial have reported promising responses to repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to prefrontal and temporo-parietal sites in patients with depersonalization disorder (DPD). We recently showed that a single session of rTMS to the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) was associated with a reduction in symptoms and increase in physiological arousal. Seven...
Frontiers in Psychology
2016
Nick Medford, Mauricio Sierra, Argyris Stringaris et al.
This paper presents functional MRI work on emotional processing in depersonalization disorder (DPD). This relatively neglected disorder is hallmarked by a disturbing change in the quality of first-person experience, almost invariably encompassing a diminished sense of self and an alteration in emotional experience such that the sufferer feels less emotionally reactive, with emotions experienced...
Psychopathology
2015
Steffen Nestler, Emma-Louise Jay, Mauricio Sierra et al.
Depersonalization disorder (DPD) entails distressing alterations in self-experiencing. However, it has long been recognized that depersonalisation symptoms occur in other disorders, particularly anxiety and panic. One strand of research proposes that depersonalization phenomenology arises through altered autonomic arousal in response to stress. We sought to examine profiles of anxiety symptoms...
Consciousness and Cognition
March 2011
Mauricio Sierra, Anthony S David
Depersonalization is characterised by a profound disruption of self-awareness mainly characterised by feelings of disembodiment and subjective emotional numbing. It has been proposed that depersonalization is caused by a fronto-limbic (particularly anterior insula) suppressive mechanism--presumably mediated via attention--which manifests subjectively as emotional numbing, and disables the...
August 13, 2009
Mauricio Sierra
Depersonalization is a dissociative disorder, causing alteration in the perception or experience of the self and a detachment from reality. This is a fascinating and clinically relevant phenomenon neglected within psychiatry. Far from being a rare condition, it can be as prevalent as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and frequently occurs in association with other neuropsychiatric conditions....
Psychological Medicine
October 1, 2005
Mauricio Sierra, Dawn Baker, Nicholas Medford et al.
Background. Depersonalization has long been considered a syndrome but there is poor agreement on its constituent symptoms.Method. In order to establish whether different symptoms of depersonalization represent the expression of a single or several underlying dimensions, an exploratory factor analysis on the Cambridge Depersonalization Scale (CDS) was carried out on 138 consecutive patients...