Consciousness, awareness of insight and neural mechanisms of schizophrenia.

ABSTRACT

According to recent research, disturbances of self-awareness and conscious experience have a critical role in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia, and in this context, schizophrenia is currently understood as a disorder characterized by distortions of acts of awareness, self-consciousness, and self-monitoring. Together, these studies suggest that the processes of disrupted awareness and conscious disintegration in schizophrenia might be related and represented by similar disruptions on the brain level, which, in principle, could be explained by various levels of disturbed connectivity and information disintegration that may negatively affect usual patterns of synchronous activity constituting adaptive integrative functions of consciousness. On the other hand, mental integration based on self-awareness and insight may significantly increase information integration and directly influence neural mechanisms underlying basic pathophysiological processes in schizophrenia.