Impact of minimal self disorders on naturalistic episodic memory in first-episode psychosis and parallels in healthy individuals with schizotypal traits.
Frontiers in psychiatry January 1, 2024 Delphine Yeh, Sylvain Penaud, Alexandre Gaston-Bellegarde et al. 3 citations
Disturbances in the minimal Self—the basic, pre-reflective sense of embodied experience—are linked to episodic memory impairments in first-episode psychosis (FEP). In a pilot study using immersive virtual reality, 10 FEP patients and 35 matched healthy controls experienced a full-body illusion with either synchronous or asynchronous visuomotor stimulation to induce strong or weak embodiment. Under strong embodiment, FEP patients performed significantly worse than controls in recognizing contextual information, though their retrieval phenomenology ratings were similar. Under weak embodiment, FEP patients performed similarly to controls in contextual recognition but rated retrieval phenomenology significantly lower. Higher schizotypy in controls correlated with a diminished sense of Self and poorer episodic memory. The findings suggest that targeting minimal Self-disorders may improve episodic memory and psychosocial outcomes in schizophrenia spectrum disorders.