Neuropsychological characteristics of highly dissociative healthy individuals.
OBJECTIVE
Dissociative disorders are characterized by disturbances in several neuropsychological domains, especially attention, memory, and consciousness. As a tendency to dissociate can also be observed in healthy individuals, and may be a risk factor for the development of dissociative disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), we were interested in the neuropsychological characteristics of these participants.


METHODS
We examined attention, memory, and executive control functions in 17 high and 17 low dissociators without any psychiatric or neurological disorder and without prior experiences of trauma.


RESULTS
High dissociators showed relative performance deficiencies in tasks of memory for associative, context-dependent verbal material, visuospatial working memory, and executive control functions in terms of a heightened perseveration tendency and false positive errors.


CONCLUSIONS
These cognitive deficits are consistent with models of dissociative disorders and dissociation in PTSD assuming a hippocampal and prefrontal dysfunction as a core factor. Mild cognitive impairments in otherwise healthy high dissociators may constitute a risk factor for the development of later PTSD or dissociative disorders.
Amrhein
Christine
C
Section of Clinical Psychology and Psychophysiology, University Hospital of Psychiatry, Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Germany.
Hengmith
Simone
S
Maragkos
Markos
M
Hennig-Fast
Kristina
K
D000328:Adult; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D004213:Dissociative Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology; D005260:Female; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires