Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2014
Brice Martin, Marc Wittmann, Nicolas Franck et al.
87 citations
Disturbances of the minimal self—the immediate sense of being a subject of experience—may be a core feature of schizophrenia, manifesting as an altered sense of presence or difficulty distinguishing self from non-self. These disturbances are not correlated with common cognitive impairments like working-memory or attention disorders. This paper reviews literature suggesting a link between such self-disturbances and alterations in time processing, including both implicit temporal integration windows and explicit duration perception. The authors argue that understanding the relationship between time and the minimal self, along with embodiment issues, requires further research focused on implicit time processing.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2017
Anne Giersch, Aaron L Mishara
45 citations
Disturbances in unconscious, automatic processing may contribute to abnormal conscious experiences in schizophrenia. Three lines of research—on spatial frequency processing, unpleasant information, and time-event structure—show impairments at both unconscious and conscious levels. The authors argue that examining unconscious physiological and automatic processing separately from conscious processing is a necessary first step to understanding how conscious distortions emerge. Phenomenological psychiatry supports this view, linking impairments in the minimal self—a tacit, non-verbal sense of bodily presence shaped by unconscious processes—to clinical symptoms. Alterations in these unconscious mechanisms may affect the feeling of being a unique individual, justifying a focus on unconscious processes distinct from conscious ones.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2018
Brice Martin, Nicolas Franck, Michel Cermolacce et al.
32 citations
Distortions in the automatic sense of time may be linked to disturbances in the minimal self in schizophrenia, but timing deficits are hard to measure objectively. This case report describes AF, a 22-year-old man with schizophrenia and no antipsychotic medication, who shows few symptoms and normal cognition but high levels of minimal self disorders. In a variable foreperiod task, AF preserved the ability to distinguish time intervals but had difficulty using the passage of time to anticipate a visual stimulus and struggled to adapt to changing time delays. The impairments were large enough to detect at the individual level. Results suggest that exploring timing deficits individually is feasible and may relate to self disorders.
PsyCh journal
March 1, 2019
Brice Martin, Nicolas Franck, Anne Giersch
14 citations
People with schizophrenia often describe disruptions in their sense of time, such as a loss of time continuity, alongside other distortions of self-experience like inner emptiness and confusion between self and others. Phenomenologists interpret these as a breakdown of the temporal structure of consciousness, possibly due to difficulty retaining past information and predicting future events. Experimental psychology supports this, showing deficits in predicting sequences of events at the millisecond level. However, the authors reflect on the limits of both phenomenological and experimental approaches and caution against premature conclusions about the underlying mechanisms, aiming instead to deepen understanding of schizophrenia.
Psychopathology
January 1, 2023
Cherise Rosen, Sohee Park, Tatiana Baxter et al.
13 citations
Sensed presence—the feeling that someone or something is there despite no one being present—is a common experience that can occur in many contexts, from isolation to psychosis. This online survey of adults found three distinct clusters of people based on their levels of sensed presence, attenuated psychosis symptoms, and transliminality (a trait involving absorption, fantasy proneness, and heightened sensitivity). One cluster had few sensed presence experiences, low psychosis symptoms, and low transliminality. A second cluster had moderate sensed presence, low psychosis symptoms, and moderate transliminality, along with increased closeness to God.
Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science
January 1, 2026
Florestan Delcourt, Henry R Cowan, Jordan Sibéoni et al.
Disturbances of the self in schizophrenia are often described at two levels: a pre-reflective, minimal sense of self and a reflective, narrative self. This integrative review examines how these two levels may be linked. Three theoretical models are presented: the Structural model, which suggests minimal self-disorders hierarchically cause narrative disturbances and the schizophrenia phenotype; the Dialectical model, which emphasizes reciprocal interactions between the two levels with both pathogenic and salutogenic effects; and the Contextual model, which considers social, territorial, and biological dimensions. Empirical studies directly testing these links are scarce and preliminary. The literature suggests promising directions for future research and clinical applications.
April 1, 2018
Patrick Poncelet, Franck, Nicolas, Martin, B. (Brice) et al.
Stabilized patients with schizophrenia can expect well-learned sensory signals and react to unusual events to some extent, but those who report feeling not immersed in the world (a measure of minimal self disorders) do not benefit from the passage of time to react faster. In a motor task, patients' feeling of control drops as soon as an imperceptible delay is introduced in haptic feedback, whereas controls tolerate such delays. Patients also have difficulty adjusting sensory anticipation when feedback is delayed. The results suggest a link between disrupted time expectation and minimal self disorders; fragile time expectations may contribute to a sense of discontinuity that disrupts bodily signals and the sense of self.