Delphine Yeh ^1* Sylvain Penaud ¹ Alexandre Gaston-Bellegarde ¹ Linda Scoriels ^2,3 Marie-Odile Krebs ^3,4 Pascale Piolino ^1*

• ¹ Université Paris Cité, Laboratoire Mémoire, Cerveau et Cognition, Boulogne-Billancourt, France
• ² UMR8240 Laboratoire de Psychologie du Développement et de l'Education de l'enfant (LaPsyDÉ), Paris, Île-de-France, France
• ³ GHU Paris Psychiatrie et Neurosciences, Hôpital Sainte Anne, Paris, France
• ⁴ Université Paris Cité, Institute of Psychiatry and Neurosciences of Paris, INSERM U1266, Laboratoire de physiopathologie des maladies psychiatriques, Paris, France

Background. Self-disorders constitute a core feature of the schizophrenia spectrum, including early stages such as first-episode psychosis (FEP). These disorders impact the minimal Self, or bodily self-consciousness, which refers to the basic, pre-reflective sense of embodied experience. The minimal Self is intrinsically linked to episodic memory, which captures specific past experiences of the Self. However, research on this relationship in the schizophrenia spectrum remains scarce. This pilot study aimed to investigate how the minimal Self modulated episodic memory of naturalistic events in FEP, using immersive virtual reality. A secondary objective was to examine the relationships between sense of Self, embodiment, episodic memory, schizotypal personality traits in healthy participants (CTL), and psychopathology in FEP. Methods. A full-body illusion was induced in 10 FEP and 35 matched CTL, using a first-person avatar, with synchronous or asynchronous visuomotor stimulation (strong or weak embodiment conditions, respectively). Following embodiment induction, participants navigated a virtual city and encountered naturalistic daily life events, which were incidentally encoded. Episodic memory of these events was assessed through a comprehensive recognition task (factual and contextual information, retrieval phenomenology). Sense of Self, schizotypal personality traits, and psychopathology were assessed via self-reported questionnaires or clinical assessments. Results. Synchronous visuomotor stimulation successfully induced a stronger sense of embodiment in both FEP and CTL. In FEP, the strong embodiment condition was associated with reduced perceived virtual space occupation by the body. Overall, CTL showed a slight, though non-significant, enhancement in recognition memory under strong compared to weak embodiment. Higher schizotypy in CTL correlated with a diminished sense of Self and poorer episodic memory. Under strong embodiment, FEP performed significantly worse than CTL in contextual information recognition, but they rated retrieval phenomenology similarly to CTL. Conversely, under weak embodiment, FEP performed similarly to CTL in contextual information recognition, but they rated retrieval phenomenology significantly lower. Conclusions. Disturbances in the minimal Self in FEP are associated with episodic memory impairments. These findings emphasise the importance of targeting minimal Self-disorders in schizophrenia spectrum disorders, since episodic memory impairments may negatively affect patients’ quality of life and psychosocial outcomes. Additionally, they support a fully dimensional model of schizotypy.