How to Link Brain and Experience? Spatiotemporal Psychopathology of the Lived Body.
Georg Northoff, Giovanni Stanghellini
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience April 28, 2016 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2016.00172 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Schizophrenia Abnormal bodily phenomena Brain resting state Spatio-temporal psychopathology |
| Key points | Argues that anomalous bodily experiences in schizophrenia, described phenomenologically as an itemized body experienced as external to the self, may be traced to decreased integration of interoceptive, proprioceptive, and exteroceptive experiences by the brain's spontaneous resting-state activity and its spatiotemporal structure. The authors present this as a tentative hypothesis linking phenomenal, trans-phenomenal, and pre-phenomenal levels. |
Abstract
The focus of the present article is on sketching a psychopathology of the body in schizophrenia and linking it to brain activity. This is done providing converging data from psychopathological evidence (phenomenal), phenomenological contructs (trans-phenomenal) and neuroscientific measures (pre-phenomenal). The phenomenal level is the detailed documentation of the patients' subjective anomalous experiences. These phenomena are explicit contents in the patients' field of consciousness. The trans-phenomenal level targets the implicit yet operative matrix that underlies these anomalous subjective experiences. Abnormal phenomena are viewed as expressions of a modification of trans-phenomenal matrix, that is, in terms of an abnormal synthesis or integration through time of intero-, proprio- and extero-ceptive stimuli. Finally, we link the abnormalities of the trans-phenomenal matrix to pre-phenomenal alterations of the brain resting state and of its spatio-temporal organization, as documented by neurobiological methods providing spatial and temporal resolution of intrinsic brain activity (with many features of the resting state remaining yet unclear though). Based on phenomenological research, the body in schizophrenia is typically experienced in an itemized way as an object external to one's self and unrelated to events in the external world. Based on neurobiological data, we tentatively hypothesize that such anomalies of the lived body are related to decreased integration between intero-, extero- and proprioceptive experiences by the brain's spontaneous activity and its temporal structure. Taken all together, this suggests that we view abnormalities of bodily experience in terms of their underlying abnormal spatiotemporal features which, as we suppose, can be traced back to the spatiotemporal features of the brain's spontaneous activity.
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Citations in the library
Cited by 15
- Abnormal Time Experiences in Major Depression: An Empirical Qualitative Study Psychopathology December 15, 2016
- Too Fast or Too Slow? Time and Neuronal Variability in Bipolar Disorder—A Combined Theoretical and Empirical Investigation Schizophrenia Bulletin March 14, 2017
- Altered self-recognition in patients with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research April 1, 2020
- Disturbed time experience during and after psychosis Schizophrenia Research: Cognition March 21, 2019
- Relating different dimensions of bodily experiences: Review and proposition of an integrative model relying on phenomenology, predictive brain and neuroscience of the self. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews May 1, 2023
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and 2 more in the library