ASYMMETRIC INFORMATION-PROCESSING IN DEVELOPMENT, EVOLUTION AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

Written by Markus FRITZSCHE, Larisa N. FRITZSCHE, Svetlana M. KOSIDUBOVA, Anatolij B. PROGNIMAK, Oleg MAYOROV on 15 December 2006. Posted in Special issue: Brain Asymmetry, Guest Editors: Joseph B. HELLIGE, Joseph E. BOGEN, Volume X, Nr. 2

Abstract:

The identification of risk factors that trigger psychosis in later life poses a formidable challenge to medicine. During a field study on lateralized mother-child interaction and based on the hypothesis that brain asymmetry and schizophrenia are functionally related, we discovered a general transformation-law which unifies different aspects of asymmetric visual information processing, hemispheric imprinting, sensory-motor integration, and corollary discharge. Emerging predictions concerning the dimensional conversion of missing information into Kolmogorov entropy were subsequently tested and confirmed in paranoid schizophrenia by non-linear, dynamical EEG analysis. Compared to matched controls, the schizophrenic subjects showed a significant enhancement of Kolmogorov entropy as well as a stress related reduction in their parasympathetic tone. In the search for candidate genes and the protection of vulnerable individuals, a correlation of these two physiological parameters might present us with a novel diagnostic tool to assess the central dysfunction of schizophrenia before the first psychotic episode strikes.

Keywords: breast-feeding, entropy, epigenetic, heart rate variability, septal region.