Phenomenological Neuropsychiatry: Linking Timing Disorders and Clinical Symptoms in Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is defined by clinical symptoms, which do not take into account neuropsychological or neurobiological disorders. Yet disorders of time experience have long been linked to disorders of sense of self by phenomenologists and represent a promising avenue for understanding the source of clinical symptoms. Here, we show how the neuropsychological and experimental approaches complement phenomenology by allowing the exploration of nonconscious timing mechanisms. We summarize a series of studies that explored predictive mechanisms in perception at the millisecond level and illustrate how measures like the feeling of control were integrated in the experimental approach, to allow us to link experimental temporal manipulations with the disorders of the sense of self in schizophrenia.