[Temporal perception and organisation, neuronal synchronisation and schizophrenia]

Abstract

Basic perceptual or motor skills involving the central nervous system as well as the subjective present require the orderly temporal organization of internal and external information. Current research in schizophrenia increasingly centers on the accompanying neurocognitive deficits with frequent reports of altered temporal processes. There has been, however, less explicit research on the basic phenomenon of temporal order. Using concrete operationalized neuropsychological procedures the present study addressed the question whether chronic schizophrenic patients (28 medicated as well as 7 unmedicated) differ in their ability to correctly judge the temporal order of visual or acoustic stimuli when compared with a healthy control group (n = 26). Within this context we found a significant impairment in basal temporal perception among patients. Moderating variables such as medication, attention deficits or the effects of motivation as an essential explanatory factor for this finding could be excluded by statistical analysis. Instead, our findings point to a fundamental disturbance in the temporal coordination of neuronal network functions in association with schizophrenic psychoses. Within this context neurophysiological, neurochemical, neuroanatomical and neuropsychological overlapping of schizophrenia and temporal perception are being presented along with a discussion of the hypothesis that disturbances in neuronal synchronization and in timing processes at different levels are of essence and a possible underlying substrate in the schizophrenic spectrum.