Consciousness, schizophrenia and complexity

According to current evidence neural correlate of consciousness likely represents synchronized neural process that connects distributed brain activities into a coherent whole. In agreement with this concept consciousness can be understood as an integrative experience connecting various mental events. There is also growing evidence that disruptions of this coherent neural binding produce disintegration of consciousness in schizophrenia. This may imply that the disrupted binding and disintegration of consciousness in schizophrenia could be related to historical Bleuler’s concept of splitting proposed as a basic process in pathogenesis of schizophrenia. In this context, recent data indicate new perspectives in research of schizophrenia that connect “split mind” with the research of neural correlates of consciousness. Together these findings suggest a hypothesis that mental disintegration in schizophrenia could be described as a level of neural disintegration leading to more irregular neural states with higher complexity that negatively affect information integration and synchronization processes in the brain.