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The personal brain

Molecular Psychiatry (2024)Cite this article

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The paper by Northoff et al. [1] is an outstanding example of the way to overcome the translational crisis in contemporary psychiatry. We completely agree with their proposal that the focus on first-person experiences of time and space is in an ideal position to address the anomalies of subjectivity that we find in the clinic of psychopathological disorders and, if extended to the brain’s spatiotemporal topographic-dynamic structure, is the key to addressing the anomalies of neurobiological mechanism. We hope that this approach to the mind-brain gap will find an increasingly favourable echo in the field of translational research and yet we wish to focus on a common limitation in Northoff et al.‘s model and the other translational hypotheses of which we are aware.

Northoff et al. are on the right track in that they put subjective experience—and not other non-specific parameters (e.g. behaviour)—at the centre of translational studies. However, this is but a step however great in the right direction. A science of the human brain cannot but take into account the individual peculiarities that characterise the human condition. How this is achievable is not for us to formulate. We can, however, say what the clinical, epistemological and ethical necessities are for insisting in this direction.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Sciences, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Giovanni Stanghellini

  2. University of Florence (Formerly), Florence, Italy

    Luciano Mecacci

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  1. Giovanni Stanghellini
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  2. Luciano Mecacci
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GS and LM contributed to this paper in equal parts.

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Correspondence to Giovanni Stanghellini.

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Stanghellini, G., Mecacci, L. The personal brain. Mol Psychiatry (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-024-02583-9

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