Abstract

DIAS, Álvaro Machado. The ambiguous legacy: canonical hypotheses about mind functioning in schizophrenia. Ciênc. cogn. [online]. 2009, vol.14, n.3, pp. 178-192. ISSN 1806-5821.

This essay aims to introduce three canonical hypotheses to the current understanding of the mind's functioning in schizophrenia and to evaluate their impact within contemporary science. The hypotheses herein presented are: 1. Projection as the core mechanism through which the individual with schizophrenia interacts with the world; 2.Loss of hemispheric asymmetry as the leit motiv of cognitive impairs; 3. Backpropagation connectionist neural networks as valid frameworks to simulate abnormal reasoning and hallucinations. Results: all these hypotheses were somehow discharged by the main stream science. Projection was replaced by externalization; loss of asymmetry was reconsidered as part of connectivity models; backpropagation neural nets were surpassed by strictly feedforward schemas imbibed in small world topologies. Nevertheless, these newer hypotheses frequently have more in common than what they have to distinguish from those others, and this contrasts with the also frequent tendency of presenting themselves as a counterpoint to the others, feature which, the present article aims to reveal

Keywords : schizophrenia; psychology; neurobiology; informational processing; symptom; etiology.

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