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Traumatic Stress, Dissociation and Schizophrenia: Psychopathological and Psychophysiological Charakteristics
Gláslová, Kateřina ; Bob, Petr (advisor) ; Kukleta, Miloslav (referee) ; Kostroň, Lubomír (referee)
Results support the hypothesis that epileptogenic phenomena are related to traumatic stress in pathogenesis of dissociative states in schizophrenia because of significant correlations of traumatic stress, dissociation, and complex partial seizure-like symptoms. This is in accord with recent findings that schizophrenia as well as epilepsy is related to a loss of physiological balance between excitation and inhibition. Epilepsy is linked to over-excitation while on the other hand schizophrenia is connected to over-inhibition in the nuclei of the limbic system, hypothalamus and their projection sites (Stevens, 1999). In epilepsy the normal equilibrium between excitation and inhibition is permanently altered by repeated focal excitation or kindling, resulting in a permanent state of excessive focal excitability and spontaneous seizures (Stevens 1999; Goddard, McIntyre, Leech, 1969). Similar "kindling" or sensitization may be induced in inhibitory systems in response to focal physiological pulsed discharges of limbic and hypothalamic neurons and this excess of inhibitory factors may then be manifested as a psychosis (Stevens, 1992, 1999). This might correspond to intracranial (stereo-tactic) EEG studies in schizophrenia patients which reported epileptic discharges in limbic structures (Heath, 1962, 1975; Monroe,...
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