Pre-reflective and reflective abnormalities in cortical midline structures in schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia research June 2, 2025 Maria Chiara Piani, Martin Jandl, Thomas Koenig et al. 3 citations
Self-disorders, which disrupt the basic sense of being a conscious subject, are central to schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Using 7 Tesla fMRI, 27 patients and 32 healthy controls performed a trait-judgment task probing pre-reflective and reflective self-experience. Greater severity of self-disorders correlated with reduced activity in the rostral posterior cingulate cortex during the pre-reflective component. During reflective self-experience, healthy controls showed bilateral frontopolar cortex activation, while patients engaged the left caudate, right frontopolar cortex, and left language area, suggesting patients rely more on analytical networks and deeper brain structures rather than the interoceptive processes typical of healthy controls.