Mirroring the self: testing neurophysiological correlates of disturbed self-experience in schizophrenia spectrum

Self-disorders (SDs) have been described as a core schizophrenia spectrum vulnerability phenotype, both in classic and contemporary psychopathological literature. However, such a core phenotype has not yet been investigated adopting a trans-domain approach that combines the phenomenological and the neurophysiological levels of analysis. The aim of this study is to investigate the relation between SDs and subtle, schizophrenia-specific impairments of emotional resonance that are supposed to reflect abnormalities in the mirror neurons mechanism. Specifically, we tested whether electromyographic response to emotional stimuli (i.e. a proxy for subtle changes in facial mimicry and related motor resonance mechanisms) would predict the occurrence of anomalous subjective experiences (i.e. SDs).