Neuroimaging and Dissociative Disorders

Although they were for a while “dissociated” (Spiegel, 2006) from the clinical and scientific arena, dissociative disorders have in the last several years received a renewed interest among several groups of researchers, who embarked on the work of identifying and describing their underlying neural correlates. Dissociative disorders are characterized by transient or chronic failures or disruptions of integration of otherwise integrated functions of consciousness, memory, perception, identity or emotion. The DSM-IV-TR (2000) includes nowadays under the heading of dissociative disorders several diagnostic entities, such as dissociative amnesia and fugue, depersonalization disorder, dissociative identity disorder and dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (such as Ganser syndrome). In contrast to DSM-IV-TR, ICD-10 (1992) also comprises under the category of dissociative (conversion) disorder the entity of conversion disorder (with its various forms), which is in DSM-IV-TR (2000) captured under the heading of somatoform disorders (and probably will remain under the same heading in the upcoming DSM-V).