The significance of adverse experience, emotional processing and body perception for pseudoneurological symptoms

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Neurological symptoms (such as movement-, sensibility- or sight-disorders) without neurologically determined origin are called pseudoneurological symptoms (PNS). A high risk for chronicity, psychological strain and consequent burden on the health system define their clinical relevance. However, treatment outcome is insufficient, which can be partly attributed to insufficient diagnostic and etiological clarity. With the overall long-term goal to contribute to more precise assessment of PNS the primary goal of the planned project is to examine the hypothetical model that PNS, characterized as somatoform (vs. psychoform) dissociation, results from an interplay of (early, predominantly) emotional adversities and abuse, with subsequent disconnection of emotional and biological systems. An imbalance in emotion processing towards alexithymia and habitual emotion suppression augments attentional focus on interoception, particularly following emotional stress. We will examine this model in a series of studies including (1) self-assessment (questionnaires, interview), (2) psychophysiological and behavioral experiments (addressing electromagnetic correlates of automatic responses to emotional stimuli and emotion regulation, and examining exteroceptive threshold upon modulation of interoceptive focus of attention), and (3) an experimental intervention re-integrating early adverse experiences and their emotional aspects into autobiographical memory.