How Are the Brain’s Neural Changes Related to Experience and Symptoms? Spatiotemporal Psychopathology

Despite intense neurobiological investigation in psychiatric disorders, the basic disturbance that underlies the psychopathological symptoms of these illnesses remains unclear. Neuroimaging has focused mainly on the brain’s extrinsic activity, specifically task-evoked or stimulus-induced activity, as related to various sensorimotor, affective, cognitive, and social functions. Recently, the focus has shifted to the brain’s intrinsic activity, otherwise known as its resting state activity. While various abnormalities have been observed during this activity, their meaning and significance for the abnormal subjective experience in psychiatric disorders, along with their various psychopathological symptoms, are yet to be defined. Recent findings link ruminations in depression to abnormal spatial organization of resting state activity. Analogously, thought disorder in schizophrenia can be traced to deficits in the resting state’s temporal structure and auditory hallucinations to spatial resting state changes. Based on these findings, psychiatric symptoms may be conceived as spatiotemporal disturbances of the resting state activity and its spatiotemporal structure. Importantly, this entails a new form of psychopathology—spatiotemporal psychopathology that directly links the brain and psyche, therefore having major diagnostic and therapeutic implications for clinical practice.