Schizophrenia and the bodily self.

Schizophrenia is often explained by neurotransmitter or genetic abnormalities, but an alternative view sees it as a disorder of the self, marked by anomalous self-experience and awareness. This perspective can guide empirical research into the bodily and neurobiological changes underlying the condition. Recent evidence on the bodily self—a minimal sense of self rooted in the body and its motor potentialities—is reviewed. Findings show that anomalies in brain-body functions, particularly multisensory integration and the differential processing of self- versus other-related bodily information, may disrupt self-experience and blur the self-other distinction in schizophrenia. These disruptions likely underlie the self-disorders characteristic of the syndrome.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Despite the historically consolidated psychopathological perspective, on the one hand, contemporary organicistic psychiatry often highlights abnormalities in neurotransmitter systems like dysregulation of dopamine transmission, neural circuitry, and genetic factors as key contributors to schizophrenia. Neuroscience, on the other, has so far almost entirely neglected the first-person experiential dimension of this syndrome, mainly focusing on high-order cognitive functions, such as executive function, working memory, theory of mind, and the like. An alternative view posits that schizophrenia is a self-disorder characterized by anomalous self-experience and awareness. This view may not only shed new light on the psychopathological features of psychosis but also inspire empirical research targeting the bodily and neurobiological changes underpinning this disorder. Cognitive neuroscience can today address classic topics of phenomenological psychopathology by adding a new level of description, finally enabling the correlation between the first-person experiential aspects of psychiatric diseases and their neurobiological roots. Recent empirical evidence on the neurobiological basis of a minimal notion of the self, the bodily self, is presented. The relationship between the body, its motor potentialities and the notion of minimal self is illustrated. Evidence on the neural mechanisms underpinning the bodily self, its plasticity, and the blurring of self-other distinction in schizophrenic patients is introduced and discussed. It is concluded that brain-body function anomalies of multisensory integration, differential processing of self- and other-related bodily information mediating self-experience, might be at the basis of the disruption of the self disorders characterizing schizophrenia.