Forging the links between phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, and psychopathology

Abstract

Debates in the philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences in the anglo-american tradition of analytic philosophy have been venturing into new topics: consciousness, the self, common sense theories of mind (intersubjectivity) and the timing of distributed processes in the brain as they may be correlated with a subjective sense of time. There have been appeals to phenomenology from various directions. In addition, there has been a sudden burst of monographs, edited books and articles which actually apply philosophical phenomenology and continental philosophy to cognitive neuroscience. A new triangulating discipline linking phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience and psychopathology is tentatively emerging. In this article, we examine how phenomenological approaches to subjective experience (i.e. first person data) are becoming increasingly important to cognitive neuroscience and its application to psychopathology. Phenomenological studies of disturbances in different mental disorders to body-schema, intentionality (i.e. self-world relationship), time-consciousness and intersubjectivity are found to have particularly promising applications to the research of their neurobiological correlates. A relationship between these disciplines which does not restrict itself to mutual constraint but allows for mutual enrichment is proposed. Curr Opin Psychiatry 11:567-573.