Neuropsychological characteristics of highly dissociative healthy individuals
Abstract
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. METHOD: 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. CONCLUSION: 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.
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Dissociative symptoms have been linked to reduced attention, executive functioning, and memory performance in healthy individuals, trauma-exposed individuals from general and military populations, and in military and civilian psychiatric samples, including individuals with PTSD, BPD, MDD, DID, and DPD.
“Specifically, dissociative symptoms have been linked to reduced attention, executive functioning, and memory performance in healthy individuals (Amrhein et al., 2008;Bergouignan et al., 2014;Brewin et al., 2013;Bruce et al., 2007;Freyd et al., 1998;Olsen and Beck, 2012), trauma-exposed individuals from general (Cromer et al., 2006) and military populations (Morgan et al., 2006), and in military”
From A review of the relation between dissociation, memory, executive functioning and social cognition in military members and civilians with neuropsychiatric conditions (2016) · cites this paper as Amrhein et al., 2008
A growing body of evidence points towards a relation between dissociative symptoms, including altered states of consciousness and identity fragmentation, and cognitive dysfunction in trauma-related psychiatric conditions.
“A growing body of evidence points towards a relation between dissociative symptoms, including altered states of consciousness and identity fragmentation, and cognitive dysfunction in traumarelated psychiatric conditions.”
From A review of the relation between dissociation, memory, executive functioning and social cognition in military members and civilians with neuropsychiatric conditions (2016) · cites this paper as Amrhein et al., 2008
In healthy individuals, higher levels of dissociation are associated with worse performance on tasks assessing working memory.
“working memory (Amrhein et al., 2008)”
From A review of the relation between dissociation, memory, executive functioning and social cognition in military members and civilians with neuropsychiatric conditions (2016) · cites this paper as Amrhein et al., 2008
Both chronic dissociation and state dissociation have been associated with reduced performance on measures of attention, executive functioning, and memory.
“Both chronic dissociation and state dissociation have been associated with reduced performance on measures of attention, executive functioning, and memory (Amrhein et al., 2008;Brewin et al., 2013;Bruce et al., 2007;Giesbrecht et al., 2004;Olsen and Beck, 2012).”
From A review of the relation between dissociation, memory, executive functioning and social cognition in military members and civilians with neuropsychiatric conditions (2016) · cites this paper as Amrhein et al., 2008
In healthy individuals, higher levels of dissociation are associated with worse performance on tasks assessing verbal memory.
“verbal memory (Amrhein et al., 2008;Devilly et al., 2007)”
From A review of the relation between dissociation, memory, executive functioning and social cognition in military members and civilians with neuropsychiatric conditions (2016) · cites this paper as Amrhein et al., 2008
In healthy individuals, higher levels of dissociation are associated with worse performance on tasks assessing executive functioning.
“individuals higher in dissociation performed worse on tasks assessing executive functioning (Amrhein et al., 2008;Giesbrecht et al., 2004)”
From A review of the relation between dissociation, memory, executive functioning and social cognition in military members and civilians with neuropsychiatric conditions (2016) · cites this paper as Amrhein et al., 2008
Evidence links heightened dissociative symptoms to reduced performance on measures assessing a broad range of cognitive functions including executive functioning, attention, working memory, immediate and delayed verbal and visual memory, autobiographical memory, and episodic memory among controls and in trauma-related psychiatric populations.
“evidence linking heightened dissociative symptoms to reduced performance on measures assessing a broad range of cognitive functions including executive functioning, attention, working memory, immediate and delayed verbal and visual memory, autobiographical memory, and episodic memory has been reported among controls and in trauma-related psychiatric populations (Amrhein et al., 2008;Brewin et al.,”
From A review of the relation between dissociation, memory, executive functioning and social cognition in military members and civilians with neuropsychiatric conditions (2016) · cites this paper as Amrhein et al., 2008
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“…on tasks assessing executive functioning (Amrhein et al., 2008; Giesbrecht et al., 2004), divided attention (Olsen and Beck, 2012), verbal memory (Amrhein et al., 2008; Devilly et al., 2007), M.C. McKinnon et al. / Neuropsychologia 90 (2016) 210–234214 episodic memory (Olsen and Beck, 2012) and…”
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- Authors
- Amrhein, C., Hengmith, S., Maragkos, M., & Hennig-Fast, K.
- Affiliations
- LMU Klinikum (DE)
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE)
- ORCID
- Maragkos, Markos
- Venue
- Journal of Trauma & Dissociation
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2008-09-19
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 525-542
- ISSN
- 1529-9732 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-9740
- OpenAlex
- W1996773006
- Cited by
- 34
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2022: 3 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 5 · 2014: 4 · 2013: 1 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 2.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Trauma & Dissociation (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research
- Keywords
- dissociation, dissociative disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention, memory, executive function, working memory, perseveration, hippocampal dysfunction, prefrontal cortex dysfunction, risk factors, healthy individuals
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Cognition Disorders, Dissociative Disorders, Female, Health Status, Humans, Male, Neuropsychological Tests, Surveys and Questionnaires, Severity of Illness Index, Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
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