Bodily self and schizophrenia: The loss of implicit self-body knowledge

Ferri, Francesca; Frassinetti, Francesca; Mastrangelo, Francesca; Salone, Anatolia; Ferro, Filippo Maria; Gallese, Vittorio

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2012.05.001

Cited by 55 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Thus, any deficits in somatosensory feedback (e.g. a lack of facial motor resonance in response to positive emotional stimuli) plus a selective bias toward the ‘single-sensory' modalities as found in our study would function as a ‘sensory vacuum' that may undermine the perceived bodily self [40,67]. We are thus inclined to consider the SzSp alterations in facial motor resonance to Audio-Video emotional stimuli as a proxy of such liability for multisensory disintegration (in the current paradigm: impairment in Audio-Video integration).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mirroring the Self: Testing Neurophysiological Correlates of Disturbed Self-Experience in Schizophrenia Spectrum

et al. 2015

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Background: Self-disorders (SDs) have been described as a core schizophrenia spectrum vulnerability phenotype, both in classic and contemporary psychopathological literature. However, such a core phenotype has not yet been investigated adopting a trans-domain approach that combines the phenomenological and the neurophysiological levels of analysis. The aim of this study is to investigate the relation between SDs and subtle, schizophrenia-specific impairments of emotional resonance that are supposed to reflect abnormalities in the mirror neurons mechanism. Specifically, we tested whether electromyographic response to emotional stimuli (i.e. a proxy for subtle changes in facial mimicry and related motor resonance mechanisms) would predict the occurrence of anomalous subjective experiences (i.e. SDs). Sampling and Methods: Eighteen schizophrenia spectrum (SzSp) patients underwent a comprehensive psychopathological examination and were contextually tested with a multimodal paradigm, recording facial electromyographic activity of muscles in response to positive and negative emotional stimuli. Experiential anomalies were explored with the Bonn Scale for the Assessment of Basic Symptoms (BSABS) and then condensed into rational subscales mapping SzSp anomalous self-experiences. Results: SzSp patients showed an imbalance in emotional motor resonance with a selective bias toward negative stimuli, as well as a multisensory integration impairment. Multiple regression analysis showed that electromyographic facial reactions in response to negative stimuli presented in auditory modality specifically and strongly correlated with SD subscore. Conclusions: The study confirms the potential of SDs as target phenotype for neurobiological research and encourages research into disturbed motor/emotional resonance as possible body-level correlate of disturbed subjective experiences in SzSp.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mirroring the Self: Testing Neurophysiological Correlates of Disturbed Self-Experience in Schizophrenia Spectrum

et al. 2015

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“…Recently, we used the same tasks as in Frassinetti et al [45] with first-episode schizophrenia (FES) patients in order to test whether a specific bodily self-advantage effect is either preserved or lost in these patients [51]. …”

Section: Loss Of the Implicit Awareness Of The Bodily Self In Schizopmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, both groups of participants did not show a self-advantage in the explicit task. However, in this task FES patients showed a higher percentage of self-misattribution errors with respect to control participants [51]. Similarly, when Daprati et al [56] previously investigated bodily self-knowledge in schizophrenia by testing patients' sense of agency, they found that hallucinating and deluded schizophrenic patients misattributed the alien hand to themselves.…”

Section: Loss Of the Implicit Awareness Of The Bodily Self In Schizopmentioning

confidence: 99%

Jaspers, the Body, and Schizophrenia: The Bodily Self

Gallese

Ferri²

2013

Psychopathology

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Karl Jaspers laid the foundations of contemporary psychopathology. Among Jaspers' contributions was his powerful vision of psychiatry as a crucial way to shed light on the human condition and existence by integrating the scientific study of psychic diseases with a theoretical approach focused on human experience. This perspective should be revitalized. In the present paper we start from the role Jaspers assigns to the body when discussing the notion of ‘personalization'. We explore the relationship between a minimal notion of the self, the ‘bodily self', and its potentiality for movement - the self's ‘power for action'. Based on recent empirical evidence, we then propose a connection between the implicit bodily self-experience and important psychopathological aspects of schizophrenia by showing that schizophrenic patients exhibit a disruption of implicit bodily self-knowledge. We propose that the bodily nature of the implicitly experiencing self might enable the continuum of experience along which all visions of the world are located - both in healthy and psychotic individuals. The power for action might provide the possibility to give form to the bodily presence characterizing in the first place our being selves.

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“…An alternative hypothesis to the neurological one suggests a psychiatric origin of BIID (De Preester, 2011). Patients with psychiatric disturbances frequently experience an altered sense of bodily self (Ferri et al, 2012), framed into more generalized emotional disturbances. For example, both bipolar syndrome and depression are featured by moderate but constant deficits in facial emotion recognition (Kohler et al, 2011).…”

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confidence: 99%

Is the desire for amputation related to disturbed emotion processing? A multiple case study analysis in BIID

2014

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Body integrity identity disorder (BIID) is characterized by the overwhelming desire to amputate one or more healthy limbs or to be paraplegic. Recently, a neurological explanation of this condition has been proposed, in part on the basis of findings that the insular cortex might present structural anomalies in these individuals. While these studies focused on body representation, much less is known about emotional processing. Importantly, emotional impairments have been found in psychiatric disorders, and a psychiatric etiology is still a valid alternative to purely neurological accounts of BIID. In this study, we explored, by means of a computerized experiment, facial emotion recognition and emotional responses to disgusting images in seven individuals with BIID, taking into account their clinical features and investigating in detail disgust processing, strongly linked to insular functioning. We demonstrate that BIID is not characterized by a general emotional impairment; rather, there is a selectively reduced disgust response to violations of the body envelope. Taken together, our results support the need to explore this condition under an interdisciplinary perspective, taking into account also emotional connotations and the social modulation of body representation.

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Bodily self and schizophrenia: The loss of implicit self-body knowledge

Cited by 55 publications

References 50 publications

Mirroring the Self: Testing Neurophysiological Correlates of Disturbed Self-Experience in Schizophrenia Spectrum

Mirroring the Self: Testing Neurophysiological Correlates of Disturbed Self-Experience in Schizophrenia Spectrum

Jaspers, the Body, and Schizophrenia: The Bodily Self

Is the desire for amputation related to disturbed emotion processing? A multiple case study analysis in BIID

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