Dissociation and neuroscience: history and new perspectives.

Abstract

History of the study of dissociation begins in the second half of the nineteenth century. It begins in the works of Hughlings Jackson and Pierre Janet, and markedly influences development of psychoanalysis and other psychological trends. According to the modern definition, dissociation represents a disturbance or alteration in the normally integrative functions of identity, memory, or consciousness. Dissociative symptoms occur mainly due to some traumatic events and probably cannot be generally explained on the basis of neurological focal lesion. However, from recent findings, it may be inferred that temporal lobe epileptic activity is important in the generation of dissociative symptoms. Recent findings show that neural networks provide an attractive framework for modeling dissociative mental processes and dissociative mechanisms. In the article we propose a new theoretical connection among neural network models of dissociation, Freeman's model of chaos in the brain and electrophysiological findings regarding dissociative states. Concluding remarks are concerned with connections of dissociation and inter-hemispheric communication.