Psychosis may involve a disruption in how the body's sense of movement (kinesthesia) and touch work together to shape the experience of having a body. Recent brain imaging studies link psychosis to increased coordination between the right anterior insula and the default mode network, which may reflect a breakdown in the interplay between immediate, pre-reflective bodily awareness and reflective, narrative time. The paper examines how kinesthesia interacts with touch and vision, and how this affects the body's cyclical sense of time, physiology, and emotional experience. These insights are offered as a foundation for body-based therapies.
In two male patients with treatment-resistant depression, a structured interview assessing their felt sense of time (TATE) detected improvements in subjective experience before a standard depression rating scale (MADRS) did. One patient's TATE scores reached general population levels at week 4, one week earlier than the MADRS indicated treatment response. These cases suggest that phenomenological assessments can capture nuanced early improvements that traditional scales may miss, offering a complementary tool for monitoring treatment effectiveness.