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Szymanek P, Homan M, van Elk M, Hohol M. Effects of expectations and sensory unreliability on voice detection - A preregistered study. Conscious Cogn 2024; 123:103718. [PMID: 38880020 DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2024.103718] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/22/2024] [Revised: 05/31/2024] [Accepted: 06/11/2024] [Indexed: 06/18/2024]
Abstract
The phenomenon of "hearing voices" can be found not only in psychotic disorders, but also in the general population, with individuals across cultures reporting auditory perceptions of supernatural beings. In our preregistered study, we investigated a possible mechanism of such experiences, grounded in the predictive processing model of agency detection. We predicted that in a signal detection task, expecting less or more voices than actually present would drive the response bias toward a more conservative and liberal response strategy, respectively. Moreover, we hypothesized that including sensory noise would enhance these expectancy effects. In line with our predictions, the findings show that detection of voices relies on expectations and that this effect is especially pronounced in the case of unreliable sensory data. As such, the study contributes to our understanding of the predictive processes in hearing and the building blocks of voice hearing experiences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Piotr Szymanek
- Doctoral School in the Social Sciences, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland; Mathematical Cognition and Learning Lab, Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.
| | - Marek Homan
- Mathematical Cognition and Learning Lab, Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland
| | - Michiel van Elk
- Institute of Psychology, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands
| | - Mateusz Hohol
- Mathematical Cognition and Learning Lab, Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland
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2
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Parvizi-Wayne D, Sandved-Smith L, Pitliya RJ, Limanowski J, Tufft MRA, Friston KJ. Forgetting ourselves in flow: an active inference account of flow states and how we experience ourselves within them. Front Psychol 2024; 15:1354719. [PMID: 38887627 PMCID: PMC11182004 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1354719] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/12/2023] [Accepted: 04/26/2024] [Indexed: 06/20/2024] Open
Abstract
Flow has been described as a state of optimal performance, experienced universally across a broad range of domains: from art to athletics, gaming to writing. However, its phenomenal characteristics can, at first glance, be puzzling. Firstly, individuals in flow supposedly report a loss of self-awareness, even though they perform in a manner which seems to evince their agency and skill. Secondly, flow states are felt to be effortless, despite the prerequisite complexity of the tasks that engender them. In this paper, we unpick these features of flow, as well as others, through the active inference framework, which posits that action and perception are forms of active Bayesian inference directed at sustained self-organisation; i.e., the minimisation of variational free energy. We propose that the phenomenology of flow is rooted in the deployment of high precision weight over (i) the expected sensory consequences of action and (ii) beliefs about how action will sequentially unfold. This computational mechanism thus draws the embodied cognitive system to minimise the ensuing (i.e., expected) free energy through the exploitation of the pragmatic affordances at hand. Furthermore, given the challenging dynamics the flow-inducing situation presents, attention must be wholly focussed on the unfolding task whilst counterfactual planning is restricted, leading to the attested loss of the sense of self-as-object. This involves the inhibition of both the sense of self as a temporally extended object and higher-order, meta-cognitive forms of self-conceptualisation. Nevertheless, we stress that self-awareness is not entirely lost in flow. Rather, it is pre-reflective and bodily. Our approach to bodily-action-centred phenomenology can be applied to similar facets of seemingly agentive experience beyond canonical flow states, providing insights into the mechanisms of so-called selfless experiences, embodied expertise and wellbeing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Darius Parvizi-Wayne
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Lars Sandved-Smith
- Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia
| | - Riddhi J. Pitliya
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
- VERSES AI Research Lab, Los Angeles, CA, United States
| | - Jakub Limanowski
- Institute of Psychology, University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
| | - Miles R. A. Tufft
- Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Karl J. Friston
- VERSES AI Research Lab, Los Angeles, CA, United States
- Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
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3
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Mazer P, Carneiro F, Domingo J, Pasion R, Silveira C, Ferreira-Santos F. Systematic review and meta-analysis of the visual mismatch negativity in schizophrenia. Eur J Neurosci 2024; 59:2863-2874. [PMID: 38739367 DOI: 10.1111/ejn.16355] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/28/2023] [Revised: 03/06/2024] [Accepted: 04/01/2024] [Indexed: 05/14/2024]
Abstract
Mismatch negativity (MMN) is an event-related potential component automatically elicited by events that violate predictions based on prior events. To elicit this component, researchers use stimulus repetition to induce predictions, and the MMN is obtained by subtracting the brain response to rare or unpredicted stimuli from that of frequent stimuli. Under the Predictive Processing framework, one increasingly popular interpretation of the mismatch response postulates that MMN represents a prediction error. In this context, the reduced MMN amplitude to auditory stimuli has been considered a potential biomarker of Schizophrenia, representing a reduced prediction error and the inability to update the mental model of the world based on the sensory signals. It is unclear, however, whether this amplitude reduction is specific for auditory events or if the visual MMN reveals a similar pattern in schizophrenia spectrum disorder. This review and meta-analysis aimed to summarise the available literature on the vMMN in schizophrenia. A systematic literature search resulted in 10 eligible studies that resulted in a combined effect size of g = -.63, CI [-.86, -.41], reflecting lower vMMN amplitudes in patients. These results are in line with the findings in the auditory domain. This component offers certain advantages, such as less susceptibility to overlap with components generated by attentional demands. Future studies should use vMMN to explore abnormalities in the Predictive Processing framework in different stages and groups of the SSD and increase the knowledge in the search for biomarkers in schizophrenia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Prune Mazer
- ESS, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Porto, Portugal
- Laboratory of Neuropsychophysiology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
- Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
| | - Fábio Carneiro
- Laboratory of Neuropsychophysiology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
- Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
- Department of Neurology, ULS do Alto Ave, Guimarães, Portugal
| | - Juan Domingo
- Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain
| | - Rita Pasion
- Laboratory of Neuropsychophysiology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
- HEI-LAB, Lusófona University, Porto, Portugal
| | - Celeste Silveira
- Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
- Psychiatry Department, Hospital S. João, Porto, Portugal
| | - Fernando Ferreira-Santos
- Laboratory of Neuropsychophysiology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal
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Wynn JK, Green MF. An EEG-Based Neuroplastic Approach to Predictive Coding in People With Schizophrenia or Traumatic Brain Injury. Clin EEG Neurosci 2024:15500594241252897. [PMID: 38711326 DOI: 10.1177/15500594241252897] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/08/2024]
Abstract
Despite different etiologies, people with schizophrenia (SCZ) or with traumatic brain injury (TBI) both show aberrant neuroplasticity. One neuroplastic mechanism that may be affected is prediction error coding. We used a roving mismatch negativity (rMMN) paradigm which uses different lengths of standard tone trains and is optimized to assess predictive coding. Twenty-five SCZ, 22 TBI (mild to moderate), and 25 healthy controls were assessed. We used a frequency-deviant rMMN in which the number of standards preceding the deviant was either 2, 6, or 36. We evaluated repetition positivity to the standard tone immediately preceding a deviant tone (repetition positivity [RP], to assess formation of the memory trace), deviant negativity to the deviant stimulus (deviant negativity [DN], which reflects signaling of a prediction error), and the difference wave between the 2 (the MMN). We found that SCZ showed reduced DN and MMN compared with healthy controls and with people with mild to moderate TBI. We did not detect impairments in any index (RP, DN, or MMN) in people with TBI compared to controls. Our findings suggest that prediction error coding assessed with rMMN is aberrant in SCZ but intact in TBI, though there is a suggestion that severity of head injury results in poorer prediction error coding.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jonathan K Wynn
- Center on Enhancement of Community Integration for Homeless Veterans, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, CA, USA
- Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Michael F Green
- Center on Enhancement of Community Integration for Homeless Veterans, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, CA, USA
- Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
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5
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Garcia-Marti G, Escarti MJ, Nacher J, Perez-Rando M, Mane A, Usall J, Berrocoso E, Pomarol-Clotet E, Lopez-Ilundain JM, Cuesta MJ, Rodriguez-Jimenez R, Gonzalez-Pinto A, Mar L, Ibañez A, Roldan A, Janssen J, Parellada M, Amoretti S, Bernardo M, Sanjuan J, Aguilar EJ. Progressive loss of cortical gray matter in first episode psychosis patients with auditory hallucinations. Schizophr Res 2024; 267:534-545. [PMID: 38044223 DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2023.11.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/28/2023] [Revised: 09/18/2023] [Accepted: 11/26/2023] [Indexed: 12/05/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Previous longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging studies have shown progressive gray matter (GM) reduction during the earliest phases of schizophrenia. It is unknown whether these progressive processes are homogeneous in all groups of patients. One way to obtain more valid findings is to focus on the symptoms. Auditory hallucinations (AHs) are frequent and reliable symptoms of psychosis. The present study aims to analyze whether longitudinal changes in structural abnormalities in cortical regions are related to the presence of AHs and the intensity of psychotic symptoms in a large sample. METHODS A Magnetic Resonance (MR) voxel-based morphometry analysis was applied to a group of 128 first episodes psychosis (FEP) patients (63 patients with AHs and 65 patients without AHs) and 78 matched healthy controls at baseline and at a 2-year follow-up. RESULTS At baseline, FEP patients exhibited significant GM volume reductions in the temporal, frontal and precentral regions. At follow-up, FEP patients exhibited GM volume changes in the temporal, Rolandic, frontal, precentral and insula regions. At baseline, no significant differences were found between FEP patients with and without AHs. At follow-up, while FEP patients with AHs showed less GM volume in temporal and frontal lobes, non-AH FEP patients showed reductions in the frontal, precentral and fusiform areas. PANSS scores showed statistically significant correlations with GM volume reductions at baseline and follow-up. CONCLUSIONS Brain cortical loss in the early phases of psychosis is not associated with potentially transitory AHs; however, brain structural changes may emerge as AHs appear in chronic patients.
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Affiliation(s)
- Gracian Garcia-Marti
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Biomedical Engineering Unit / Radiology Department, Quirónsalud Hospital, Valencia, Spain; Institute of research of the Clinic Hospital from Valencia (INCLIVA), Valencia, Spain.
| | - Maria J Escarti
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Institute of research of the Clinic Hospital from Valencia (INCLIVA), Valencia, Spain; Unit of Psychiatry, Clinic Hospital Valencia, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
| | - Juan Nacher
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Institute of research of the Clinic Hospital from Valencia (INCLIVA), Valencia, Spain; Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine (BIOTECMED), Universitat de València, Burjassot, Spain
| | - Marta Perez-Rando
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Institute of research of the Clinic Hospital from Valencia (INCLIVA), Valencia, Spain; Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine (BIOTECMED), Universitat de València, Burjassot, Spain
| | - Anna Mane
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Institut de Neuropsiquiatria i Adiccions (INAD), Parc de Salut Mar, Barcelona, Spain; Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), Barcelona, Spain; Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS). Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Judith Usall
- Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu, Esplugues de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain; Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, Sant Boi de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Esther Berrocoso
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Neuropsychopharmacology and Psychobiology Research Group, Department of Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine, University of Cádiz, Cádiz, Spain; Instituto de Investigación e Innovación Biomédica de Cádiz, INiBICA, Hospital Universitario Puerta del Mar, Cádiz, Spain
| | - Edith Pomarol-Clotet
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; FIDMAG Germanes Hospitalàries Research Foundation, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Jose M Lopez-Ilundain
- Department of Psychiatry, Hospital Universitario de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain; Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de Navarra (IdiSNa), Pamplona, Spain
| | - Manuel J Cuesta
- Department of Psychiatry, Hospital Universitario de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain; Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de Navarra (IdiSNa), Pamplona, Spain
| | - Roberto Rodriguez-Jimenez
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Hospital 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain; Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Madrid, Spain
| | - Ana Gonzalez-Pinto
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Bioaraba, Department of Psychiatry, Hospital Universitario de Alava, UPV/EHU, Vitoria, Spain
| | - Lorea Mar
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Bioaraba, Department of Psychiatry, Hospital Universitario de Alava, UPV/EHU, Vitoria, Spain
| | - Angela Ibañez
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Department of Psychiatry, Hospital Universitario Ramón y Cajal, IRYCIS, Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain
| | - Alexandra Roldan
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Psychiatry Department, Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau, IIB SANT PAU, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Joost Janssen
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Madrid, Spain; Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Gregorio Marañón, Madrid, Spain; School of Medicine, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain
| | - Mara Parellada
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Madrid, Spain; Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Gregorio Marañón, Madrid, Spain; School of Medicine, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain
| | - Silvia Amoretti
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Barcelona Clínic Schizophrenia Unit, Neuroscience Institute, Hospital Clínic of Barcelona; University of Barcelona, Spain; Bipolar and Depressive Disorder Unit, Neuroscience Institute, Hospital Clínic, Barcelona, Spain; Group of Psychiatry, Mental Health and Addictions, Psychiatric Genetics Unit, Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR), Barcelona, Spain
| | - Miquel Bernardo
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Barcelona Clínic Schizophrenia Unit (BCSU), Neuroscience Institute, Hospital Clínic, Barcelona, Spain; Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona, Spain; Department of Medicine, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
| | - Julio Sanjuan
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Institute of research of the Clinic Hospital from Valencia (INCLIVA), Valencia, Spain; Unit of Psychiatry, Clinic Hospital Valencia, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
| | - Eduardo J Aguilar
- Biomedical Research Networking Centre in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain; Institute of research of the Clinic Hospital from Valencia (INCLIVA), Valencia, Spain; Unit of Psychiatry, Clinic Hospital Valencia, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
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6
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Wang W, Zhu C, Jia T, Zu M, Tang Y, Zhou L, Tian Y, Si B, Zhou K. Reviving Bistable Perception in Patients With Depression by Decreasing the Overestimation of Prior Precision. Cogn Sci 2024; 48:e13452. [PMID: 38742272 DOI: 10.1111/cogs.13452] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/03/2023] [Revised: 04/01/2024] [Accepted: 04/18/2024] [Indexed: 05/16/2024]
Abstract
Slower perceptual alternations, a notable perceptual effect observed in psychiatric disorders, can be alleviated by antidepressant therapies that affect serotonin levels in the brain. While these phenomena have been well documented, the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms remain to be elucidated. Our study bridges this gap by employing a computational cognitive approach within a Bayesian predictive coding framework to explore these mechanisms in depression. We fitted a prediction error (PE) model to behavioral data from a binocular rivalry task, uncovering that significantly higher initial prior precision and lower PE led to a slower switch rate in patients with depression. Furthermore, serotonin-targeting antidepressant treatments significantly decreased the prior precision and increased PE, both of which were predictive of improvements in the perceptual alternation rate of depression patients. These findings indicated that the substantially slower perception switch rate in patients with depression was caused by the greater reliance on top-down priors and that serotonin treatment's efficacy was in its recalibration of these priors and enhancement of PE. Our study not only elucidates the cognitive underpinnings of depression, but also suggests computational modeling as a potent tool for integrating cognitive science with clinical psychology, advancing our understanding and treatment of cognitive impairments in depression.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wenbo Wang
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education (Beijing Normal University), Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University
| | - Changbo Zhu
- State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Institutes for Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing
| | | | - Meidan Zu
- Department of Psychology and Sleep Medicine, The Second Hospital of Anhui Medical University
| | - Yandong Tang
- State Key Laboratory of Robotics, Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- Institutes for Robotics and Intelligent Manufacturing, Chinese Academy of Sciences
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing
| | - Liqin Zhou
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education (Beijing Normal University), Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University
| | - Yanghua Tian
- Department of Neurology, The Second Hospital of Anhui Medical University
- Department of Neurology, The First Hospital of Anhui Medical University
| | - Bailu Si
- School of Systems Science, Beijing Normal University
| | - Ke Zhou
- Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education (Beijing Normal University), Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University
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7
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Nour Eddine S, Brothers T, Wang L, Spratling M, Kuperberg GR. A predictive coding model of the N400. Cognition 2024; 246:105755. [PMID: 38428168 PMCID: PMC10984641 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105755] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/22/2023] [Revised: 02/14/2024] [Accepted: 02/19/2024] [Indexed: 03/03/2024]
Abstract
The N400 event-related component has been widely used to investigate the neural mechanisms underlying real-time language comprehension. However, despite decades of research, there is still no unifying theory that can explain both its temporal dynamics and functional properties. In this work, we show that predictive coding - a biologically plausible algorithm for approximating Bayesian inference - offers a promising framework for characterizing the N400. Using an implemented predictive coding computational model, we demonstrate how the N400 can be formalized as the lexico-semantic prediction error produced as the brain infers meaning from the linguistic form of incoming words. We show that the magnitude of lexico-semantic prediction error mirrors the functional sensitivity of the N400 to various lexical variables, priming, contextual effects, as well as their higher-order interactions. We further show that the dynamics of the predictive coding algorithm provides a natural explanation for the temporal dynamics of the N400, and a biologically plausible link to neural activity. Together, these findings directly situate the N400 within the broader context of predictive coding research. More generally, they raise the possibility that the brain may use the same computational mechanism for inference across linguistic and non-linguistic domains.
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Affiliation(s)
- Samer Nour Eddine
- Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Science, Tufts University, United States of America.
| | - Trevor Brothers
- Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Science, Tufts University, United States of America; Department of Psychology, North Carolina A&T, United States of America
| | - Lin Wang
- Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Science, Tufts University, United States of America; Department of Psychiatry and the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, United States of America
| | | | - Gina R Kuperberg
- Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Science, Tufts University, United States of America; Department of Psychiatry and the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, United States of America
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8
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Leclercq S, Szaffarczyk S, Leptourgos P, Yger P, Fakhri A, Wathelet M, Bouttier V, Denève S, Jardri R. Conspiracy beliefs and perceptual inference in times of political uncertainty. Sci Rep 2024; 14:9001. [PMID: 38637589 PMCID: PMC11026417 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-59434-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/11/2023] [Accepted: 04/10/2024] [Indexed: 04/20/2024] Open
Abstract
Sociopolitical crises causing uncertainty have accumulated in recent years, providing fertile ground for the emergence of conspiracy ideations. Computational models constitute valuable tools for understanding the mechanisms at play in the formation and rigidification of these unshakeable beliefs. Here, the Circular Inference model was used to capture associations between changes in perceptual inference and the dynamics of conspiracy ideations in times of uncertainty. A bistable perception task and conspiracy belief assessment focused on major sociopolitical events were administered to large populations from three polarized countries. We show that when uncertainty peaks, an overweighting of sensory information is associated with conspiracy ideations. Progressively, this exploration strategy gives way to an exploitation strategy in which increased adherence to conspiracy theories is associated with the amplification of prior information. Overall, the Circular Inference model sheds new light on the possible mechanisms underlying the progressive strengthening of conspiracy theories when individuals face highly uncertain situations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Salomé Leclercq
- INSERM U1172, CHU Lille, Lille Neuroscience and Cognition Centre, CURE Platform, Fontan Hospital, Lille University, 59000, Lille, France.
| | - Sébastien Szaffarczyk
- INSERM U1172, CHU Lille, Lille Neuroscience and Cognition Centre, CURE Platform, Fontan Hospital, Lille University, 59000, Lille, France
| | - Pantelis Leptourgos
- INSERM U1172, CHU Lille, Lille Neuroscience and Cognition Centre, CURE Platform, Fontan Hospital, Lille University, 59000, Lille, France
| | - Pierre Yger
- INSERM U1172, CHU Lille, Lille Neuroscience and Cognition Centre, CURE Platform, Fontan Hospital, Lille University, 59000, Lille, France
| | | | - Marielle Wathelet
- INSERM U1172, CHU Lille, Lille Neuroscience and Cognition Centre, CURE Platform, Fontan Hospital, Lille University, 59000, Lille, France
| | - Vincent Bouttier
- INSERM U1172, CHU Lille, Lille Neuroscience and Cognition Centre, CURE Platform, Fontan Hospital, Lille University, 59000, Lille, France
- LNC, INSERM U-960, Institut de Sciences Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure, 75005, Paris, France
| | - Sophie Denève
- LNC, INSERM U-960, Institut de Sciences Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure, 75005, Paris, France
| | - Renaud Jardri
- INSERM U1172, CHU Lille, Lille Neuroscience and Cognition Centre, CURE Platform, Fontan Hospital, Lille University, 59000, Lille, France.
- LNC, INSERM U-960, Institut de Sciences Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure, 75005, Paris, France.
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9
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Heindorf M, Keller GB. Antipsychotic drugs selectively decorrelate long-range interactions in deep cortical layers. eLife 2024; 12:RP86805. [PMID: 38578678 PMCID: PMC10997332 DOI: 10.7554/elife.86805] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 04/06/2024] Open
Abstract
Psychosis is characterized by a diminished ability of the brain to distinguish externally driven activity patterns from self-generated activity patterns. Antipsychotic drugs are a class of small molecules with relatively broad binding affinity for a variety of neuromodulator receptors that, in humans, can prevent or ameliorate psychosis. How these drugs influence the function of cortical circuits, and in particular their ability to distinguish between externally and self-generated activity patterns, is still largely unclear. To have experimental control over self-generated sensory feedback, we used a virtual reality environment in which the coupling between movement and visual feedback can be altered. We then used widefield calcium imaging to determine the cell type-specific functional effects of antipsychotic drugs in mouse dorsal cortex under different conditions of visuomotor coupling. By comparing cell type-specific activation patterns between locomotion onsets that were experimentally coupled to self-generated visual feedback and locomotion onsets that were not coupled, we show that deep cortical layers were differentially activated in these two conditions. We then show that the antipsychotic drug clozapine disrupted visuomotor integration at locomotion onsets also primarily in deep cortical layers. Given that one of the key components of visuomotor integration in cortex is long-range cortico-cortical connections, we tested whether the effect of clozapine was detectable in the correlation structure of activity patterns across dorsal cortex. We found that clozapine as well as two other antipsychotic drugs, aripiprazole and haloperidol, resulted in a strong reduction in correlations of layer 5 activity between cortical areas and impaired the spread of visuomotor prediction errors generated in visual cortex. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that a major functional effect of antipsychotic drugs is a selective alteration of long-range layer 5-mediated communication.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthias Heindorf
- Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical ResearchBaselSwitzerland
| | - Georg B Keller
- Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical ResearchBaselSwitzerland
- Faculty of Science, University of BaselBaselSwitzerland
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10
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Harding JN, Wolpe N, Brugger SP, Navarro V, Teufel C, Fletcher PC. A new predictive coding model for a more comprehensive account of delusions. Lancet Psychiatry 2024; 11:295-302. [PMID: 38242143 DOI: 10.1016/s2215-0366(23)00411-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/21/2023] [Revised: 11/01/2023] [Accepted: 11/30/2023] [Indexed: 01/21/2024]
Abstract
Attempts to understand psychosis-the experience of profoundly altered perceptions and beliefs-raise questions about how the brain models the world. Standard predictive coding approaches suggest that it does so by minimising mismatches between incoming sensory evidence and predictions. By adjusting predictions, we converge iteratively on a best guess of the nature of the reality. Recent arguments have shown that a modified version of this framework-hybrid predictive coding-provides a better model of how healthy agents make inferences about external reality. We suggest that this more comprehensive model gives us a richer understanding of psychosis compared with standard predictive coding accounts. In this Personal View, we briefly describe the hybrid predictive coding model and show how it offers a more comprehensive account of the phenomenology of delusions, thereby providing a potentially powerful new framework for computational psychiatric approaches to psychosis. We also make suggestions for future work that could be important in formalising this novel perspective.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jessica Niamh Harding
- School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
| | - Noham Wolpe
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; Department of Physical Therapy, The Stanley Steyer School of Health Professions, Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel; Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
| | - Stefan Peter Brugger
- Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK; Centre for Academic Mental Health, Bristol Medical school, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
| | - Victor Navarro
- Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
| | - Christoph Teufel
- Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
| | - Paul Charles Fletcher
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge, UK; Wellcome Trust MRC Institute of Metabolic Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
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11
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Parrotta E, Bach P, Perrucci MG, Costantini M, Ferri F. Heart is deceitful above all things: Threat expectancy induces the illusory perception of increased heartrate. Cognition 2024; 245:105719. [PMID: 38278039 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105719] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/27/2023] [Revised: 11/24/2023] [Accepted: 01/08/2024] [Indexed: 01/28/2024]
Abstract
It has been suggested that our perception of the internal milieu, or the body's internal state, is shaped by our beliefs and previous knowledge about the body's expected state, rather than being solely based on actual interoceptive experiences. This study investigated whether heartbeat perception could be illusorily distorted towards prior subjective beliefs, such that threat expectations suffice to induce a misperception of heartbeat frequency. Participants were instructed to focus on their cardiac activity and report their heartbeat, either tapping along to it (Experiment 1) or silently counting (Experiment 2) while ECG was recorded. While completing this task, different cues provided valid predictive information about the intensity of an upcoming cutaneous stimulation (high- vs. low- pain). Results showed that participants expected a heart rate increase over the anticipation of high- vs. low-pain stimuli and that this belief was perceptually instantiated, as suggested by their interoceptive reports. Importantly, the perceived increase was not mirrored by the real heart rate. Perceptual modulations were absent when participants executed the same task but with an exteroceptive stimulus (Experiment 3). The findings reveal, for the first time, an interoceptive illusion of increased heartbeats elicited by threat expectancy and shed new light on interoceptive processes through the lenses of Bayesian predictive processes, providing tantalizing insights into how such illusory phenomena may intersect with the recognition and regulation of people's internal states.
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Affiliation(s)
- Eleonora Parrotta
- School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, UK; School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, UK.
| | - Patric Bach
- School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen, UK; School of Psychology, University of Plymouth, UK
| | - Mauro Gianni Perrucci
- Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, "G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy; Institute for Advanced Biomedical Technologies - ITAB, "G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy
| | - Marcello Costantini
- Department of Psychological, Health and Territorial Sciences, "G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy; Institute for Advanced Biomedical Technologies - ITAB, "G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy
| | - Francesca Ferri
- Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences, "G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy; Institute for Advanced Biomedical Technologies - ITAB, "G. d'Annunzio" University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy
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12
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Baker SC, Messer SJ, Girgis RR, Horga G. Prior overweighting relates to delusional ideation in individuals at clinical high-risk for psychosis. Schizophr Res 2024; 266:153-155. [PMID: 38402655 DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2024.02.022] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/26/2023] [Revised: 12/08/2023] [Accepted: 02/17/2024] [Indexed: 02/27/2024]
Affiliation(s)
- Seth C Baker
- Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA; Jacobs School of Medicine and Biological Sciences, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA
| | - Sylvie J Messer
- Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA; Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Yeshiva University, Bronx, NY, USA
| | - Ragy R Girgis
- Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA
| | - Guillermo Horga
- Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA.
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13
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White B, Clark A, Miller M. Digital Being: social media and the predictive mind. Neurosci Conscious 2024; 2024:niae008. [PMID: 38504826 PMCID: PMC10949958 DOI: 10.1093/nc/niae008] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/15/2023] [Revised: 12/27/2023] [Accepted: 02/22/2024] [Indexed: 03/21/2024] Open
Abstract
Social media is implicated today in an array of mental health concerns. While concerns around social media have become mainstream, little is known about the specific cognitive mechanisms underlying the correlations seen in these studies or why we find it so hard to stop engaging with these platforms when things obviously begin to deteriorate for us. New advances in computational neuroscience, however, are now poised to shed light on this matter. In this paper, we approach the phenomenon of social media addiction through the lens of the active inference framework. According to this framework, predictive agents like us use a 'generative model' of the world to predict our own incoming sense data and act to minimize any discrepancy between the prediction and incoming signal (prediction error). In order to live well and be able to act effectively to minimize prediction error, it is vital that agents like us have a generative model, which not only accurately reflects the regularities of our complex environment but is also flexible and dynamic and able to stay accurate in volatile and turbulent circumstances. In this paper, we propose that some social media platforms are a spectacularly effective way of warping an agent's generative model and of arresting the model's ability to flexibly track and adapt to changes in the environment. We go on to investigate cases of digital tech, which do not have these adverse effects and suggest-based on the active inference framework-some ways to understand why some forms of digital technology pose these risks, while others do not.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ben White
- School of Media, Arts and Humanities, University of Sussex, Arts A07, Brighton BN1 9RH, United Kingdom
| | - Andy Clark
- School of Media, Arts and Humanities, University of Sussex, Arts A07, Brighton BN1 9RH, United Kingdom
- Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Macquarie University Wallumattagal Campus Macquarie Park, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia
| | - Mark Miller
- Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies, Monash University, Wellington Rd, Clayton, Melbourne, VIC 3800, Australia
- Psychology Department, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, 4th Floor, Sidney Smith Hall, Toronto, ON M5S 3G3, Canada
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14
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Benrimoh D, Fisher VL, Seabury R, Sibarium E, Mourgues C, Chen D, Powers A. Evidence for Reduced Sensory Precision and Increased Reliance on Priors in Hallucination-Prone Individuals in a General Population Sample. Schizophr Bull 2024; 50:349-362. [PMID: 37830405 PMCID: PMC10919780 DOI: 10.1093/schbul/sbad136] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/14/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND There is increasing evidence that people with hallucinations overweight perceptual beliefs relative to incoming sensory evidence. Past work demonstrating prior overweighting has used simple, nonlinguistic stimuli. However, auditory hallucinations in psychosis are often complex and linguistic. There may be an interaction between the type of auditory information being processed and its perceived quality in engendering hallucinations. STUDY DESIGN We administered a linguistic version of the conditioned hallucinations (CH) task to an online sample of 88 general population participants. Metrics related to hallucination-proneness, hallucination severity, stimulus thresholds, and stimulus detection rates were collected. Data were used to fit parameters of a Hierarchical Gaussian Filter (HGF) model of perceptual inference to determine how latent perceptual states influenced task behavior. STUDY RESULTS Replicating past results, higher CH rates were observed both in those with recent hallucinatory experiences as well as participants with high hallucination-proneness; CH rates were positively correlated with increased prior weighting; and increased prior weighting was related to hallucination severity. Unlike past results, participants with recent hallucinatory experiences as well as those with higher hallucination-proneness had higher stimulus thresholds, lower sensitivity to stimuli presented at the highest threshold, and had lower response confidence, consistent with lower precision of sensory evidence. CONCLUSIONS We replicate the finding that increased CH rates and recent hallucinations correlate with increased prior weighting using a linguistic version of the CH task. Results support a role for reduced sensory precision in the interplay between prior weighting and hallucination-proneness.
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Affiliation(s)
- David Benrimoh
- Department of Psychiatry, McGill University School of Medicine, Montreal, Canada
| | - Victoria L Fisher
- Yale University School of Medicine and the Connecticut Mental Health Center, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Rashina Seabury
- Yale University School of Medicine and the Connecticut Mental Health Center, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Ely Sibarium
- Yale University School of Medicine and the Connecticut Mental Health Center, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Catalina Mourgues
- Yale University School of Medicine and the Connecticut Mental Health Center, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Doris Chen
- Yale University School of Medicine and the Connecticut Mental Health Center, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Albert Powers
- Yale University School of Medicine and the Connecticut Mental Health Center, New Haven, CT, USA
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15
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López-Silva P, Harrow M, Jobe TH, Tufano M, Harrow H, Rosen C. 'Are these my thoughts?': A 20-year prospective study of thought insertion, thought withdrawal, thought broadcasting, and their relationship to auditory verbal hallucinations. Schizophr Res 2024; 265:46-57. [PMID: 35945121 DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2022.07.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/29/2022] [Revised: 06/27/2022] [Accepted: 07/08/2022] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
The co-occurrence of delusions and other symptoms at the onset of psychosis is a challenge for theories about the aetiology of psychosis. This paper explores the relatedness of delusions about the experience of thinking (thought insertion, thought withdrawal, and thought broadcasting) and auditory verbal hallucinations by describing their trajectories over a 20-year period in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, affective and other psychosis, and unipolar depression nonpsychosis. The sample consisted of 407 participants who were recruited at index hospitalization and evaluated over six follow-ups over 20 years. The symptom structure associated with thought insertion included auditory verbal hallucinations, somatic hallucinations, other hallucinations, delusions of thought-dissemination, delusions of control, delusion of self-depreciation, depersonalization and anxiety. The symptom constellation of thought withdrawal included somatic hallucinations, other hallucinations, delusions of thought dissemination, delusions of control, sexual delusions, depersonalization, negative symptoms, depression, and anxiety. The symptom constellation of thought broadcasting included auditory verbal hallucinations, somatic hallucinations, delusions of thought-dissemination, delusion of self-depreciation, fantastic delusions, sexual delusions, and depersonalization. Auditory verbal hallucinations and delusions of self-depreciation were significantly associated with both thought insertion and thought broadcasting. Thought insertion and thought withdrawal were significantly associated with other hallucinations, delusions of control, and anxiety; thought withdrawal and thought broadcasting were significantly related to sexual delusions. We hypothesize that specific symptom constellations over time might be explained as the product of pseudo-coherent realities created to give meaning to the experience of the world and the self of individuals in psychosis based on both prior top-down and ongoing bottom-up elements.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pablo López-Silva
- Faculty of Social Sciences, School of Psychology, Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile
| | - Martin Harrow
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States
| | - Thomas H Jobe
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States
| | - Michele Tufano
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States
| | - Helen Harrow
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States
| | - Cherise Rosen
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States.
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16
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Lehet M, Rolfs M, Bao J, Fattal J, Thakkar KN. Pre-saccadic shifts of attention in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia. Brain Behav 2024; 14:e3466. [PMID: 38450916 PMCID: PMC10918725 DOI: 10.1002/brb3.3466] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/18/2023] [Revised: 02/15/2024] [Accepted: 02/18/2024] [Indexed: 03/08/2024] Open
Abstract
INTRODUCTION Pathophysiological theories of schizophrenia (SZ) symptoms posit an abnormality in using predictions to guide behavior. One such prediction is based on imminent movements, via corollary discharge signals (CD) that relay information about planned movement kinematics to sensory brain regions. Empirical evidence suggests a reduced influence of sensorimotor predictions in individuals with SZ within multiple sensory systems, including in the visual system. One function of CD in the visual system is to selectively enhance visual sensitivity at the location of planned eye movements (pre-saccadic attention), thus enabling a prediction of the to-be-foveated stimulus. We expected pre-saccadic attention shifts to be less pronounced in individuals with SZ than in healthy controls (HC), resulting in unexpected sensory consequences of eye movements, which may relate to symptoms than can be explained in the context of altered allocation of attention. METHODS We examined this question by testing 30 SZ and 30 HC on a pre-saccadic attention task. On each trial participants made a saccade to a cued location in an array of four stimuli. A discrimination target that was either congruent or incongruent with the cued location was briefly presented after the cue, during saccade preparation. Pre-saccadic attention was quantified by comparing accuracy on congruent trials to incongruent trials within the interval preceding the saccade. RESULTS Although SZs were less accurate overall, the magnitude of the pre-saccadic attention effect generally did not differ across groups nor show a convincing relationship with symptom severity. We did, however, observe that SZ had reduced pre-saccadic attention effects when the discrimination target (probe) was presented at early stages of saccade planning, when pre-saccadic attention effects first emerged in HC. CONCLUSION These findings suggest generally intact pre-saccadic shifts of attention in SZ, albeit slightly delayed. Results contribute to our understanding of altered sensory predictions in people with schizophrenia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matthew Lehet
- Department of PsychologyMichigan State UniversityEast LansingMichiganUSA
| | - Martin Rolfs
- Department of PsychologyHumboldt UniversityBerlinGermany
| | - Jacqueline Bao
- Department of PsychologyMichigan State UniversityEast LansingMichiganUSA
| | - Jessica Fattal
- Department of PsychologyNorthwestern UniversityEvanstonIllinoisUSA
| | - Katharine N. Thakkar
- Department of PsychologyMichigan State UniversityEast LansingMichiganUSA
- Psychiatry and Behavioral MedicineMichigan State University College of Human MedicineEast LansingMichiganUSA
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17
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Milne GA, Lisi M, McLean A, Zheng R, Groen II, Dekker TM. Perceptual reorganization from prior knowledge emerges late in childhood. iScience 2024; 27:108787. [PMID: 38303715 PMCID: PMC10831247 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.108787] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/06/2023] [Revised: 09/05/2023] [Accepted: 01/02/2024] [Indexed: 02/03/2024] Open
Abstract
Human vision relies heavily on prior knowledge. Here, we show for the first time that prior-knowledge-induced reshaping of visual inputs emerges gradually in late childhood. To isolate the effects of prior knowledge on perception, we presented 4- to 12-year-olds and adults with two-tone images - hard-to-recognize degraded photos. In adults, seeing the original photo triggers perceptual reorganization, causing mandatory recognition of the two-tone version. This involves top-down signaling from higher-order brain areas to early visual cortex. We show that children younger than 7-9 years do not experience this knowledge-guided shift, despite viewing the original photo immediately before each two-tone. To assess computations underlying this development, we compared human performance to three neural networks with varying architectures. The best-performing model behaved much like 4- to 5-year-olds, displaying feature-based rather than holistic processing strategies. The reconciliation of prior knowledge with sensory input undergoes a striking age-related shift, which may underpin the development of many perceptual abilities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Georgia A. Milne
- Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, EC1V 9EL London, UK
- Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, WC1H 0AP London, UK
| | - Matteo Lisi
- Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, TW20 0EX London, UK
| | - Aisha McLean
- Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, EC1V 9EL London, UK
| | - Rosie Zheng
- Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, 1098 XH Amsterdam, the Netherlands
| | - Iris I.A. Groen
- Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, 1098 XH Amsterdam, the Netherlands
| | - Tessa M. Dekker
- Institute of Ophthalmology, University College London, EC1V 9EL London, UK
- Division of Psychology and Language Sciences, University College London, WC1H 0AP London, UK
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18
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Zhou T, Ho YY, Lee RX, Fath AB, He K, Scott J, Bajwa N, Hartley ND, Wilde J, Gao X, Li C, Hong E, Nassar MR, Wimmer RD, Singh T, Halassa MM, Feng G. Enhancement of mediodorsal thalamus rescues aberrant belief dynamics in a mouse model with schizophrenia-associated mutation. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2024:2024.01.08.574745. [PMID: 38260581 PMCID: PMC10802391 DOI: 10.1101/2024.01.08.574745] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/24/2024]
Abstract
Optimizing behavioral strategy requires belief updating based on new evidence, a process that engages higher cognition. In schizophrenia, aberrant belief dynamics may lead to psychosis, but the mechanisms underlying this process are unknown, in part, due to lack of appropriate animal models and behavior readouts. Here, we address this challenge by taking two synergistic approaches. First, we generate a mouse model bearing patient-derived point mutation in Grin2a (Grin2aY700X+/-), a gene that confers high-risk for schizophrenia and recently identified by large-scale exome sequencing. Second, we develop a computationally trackable foraging task, in which mice form and update belief-driven strategies in a dynamic environment. We found that Grin2aY700X+/- mice perform less optimally than their wild-type (WT) littermates, showing unstable behavioral states and a slower belief update rate. Using functional ultrasound imaging, we identified the mediodorsal (MD) thalamus as hypofunctional in Grin2aY700X+/- mice, and in vivo task recordings showed that MD neurons encoded dynamic values and behavioral states in WT mice. Optogenetic inhibition of MD neurons in WT mice phenocopied Grin2aY700X+/- mice, and enhancing MD activity rescued task deficits in Grin2aY700X+/- mice. Together, our study identifies the MD thalamus as a key node for schizophrenia-relevant cognitive dysfunction, and a potential target for future therapeutics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tingting Zhou
- Yang Tan Collection and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Yi-Yun Ho
- Yang Tan Collection and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Ray X Lee
- Yang Tan Collection and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Amanda B Fath
- Yang Tan Collection and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Kathleen He
- Yang Tan Collection and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Jonathan Scott
- Department of Neuroscience, Tufts University School of Medicine
| | - Navdeep Bajwa
- Department of Neuroscience, Tufts University School of Medicine
| | - Nolan D Hartley
- Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
| | - Jonathan Wilde
- Yang Tan Collection and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Xian Gao
- Yang Tan Collection and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Cui Li
- Yang Tan Collection and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | - Evan Hong
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
| | | | - Ralf D Wimmer
- Department of Neuroscience, Tufts University School of Medicine
| | - Tarjinder Singh
- Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
| | | | - Guoping Feng
- Yang Tan Collection and McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
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19
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Reeder RR, Sala G, van Leeuwen TM. A novel model of divergent predictive perception. Neurosci Conscious 2024; 2024:niae006. [PMID: 38348335 PMCID: PMC10860603 DOI: 10.1093/nc/niae006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/12/2023] [Revised: 01/16/2024] [Accepted: 01/23/2024] [Indexed: 02/15/2024] Open
Abstract
Predictive processing theories state that our subjective experience of reality is shaped by a balance of expectations based on previous knowledge about the world (i.e. priors) and confidence in sensory input from the environment. Divergent experiences (e.g. hallucinations and synaesthesia) are likely to occur when there is an imbalance between one's reliance on priors and sensory input. In a novel theoretical model, inspired by both predictive processing and psychological principles, we propose that predictable divergent experiences are associated with natural or environmentally induced prior/sensory imbalances: inappropriately strong or inflexible (i.e. maladaptive) high-level priors (beliefs) combined with low sensory confidence can result in reality discrimination issues, a characteristic of psychosis; maladaptive low-level priors (sensory expectations) combined with high sensory confidence can result in atypical sensory sensitivities and persistent divergent percepts, a characteristic of synaesthesia. Crucially, we propose that whether different divergent experiences manifest with dominantly sensory (e.g. hallucinations) or nonsensory characteristics (e.g. delusions) depends on mental imagery ability, which is a spectrum from aphantasia (absent or weak imagery) to hyperphantasia (extremely vivid imagery). We theorize that imagery is critically involved in shaping the sensory richness of divergent perceptual experience. In sum, to predict a range of divergent perceptual experiences in both clinical and general populations, three factors must be accounted for: a maladaptive use of priors, individual level of confidence in sensory input, and mental imagery ability. These ideas can be expressed formally using nonparametric regression modeling. We provide evidence for our theory from previous work and deliver predictions for future research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Reshanne R Reeder
- Department of Psychology, Institute of Population Health, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3BX, United Kingdom
| | - Giovanni Sala
- Department of Psychology, Institute of Population Health, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3BX, United Kingdom
| | - Tessa M van Leeuwen
- Department of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands
- Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
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20
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Singletary NM, Gottlieb J, Horga G. The parieto-occipital cortex is a candidate neural substrate for the human ability to approximate Bayesian inference. Commun Biol 2024; 7:165. [PMID: 38337012 PMCID: PMC10858241 DOI: 10.1038/s42003-024-05821-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2022] [Accepted: 01/15/2024] [Indexed: 02/12/2024] Open
Abstract
Adaptive decision-making often requires one to infer unobservable states based on incomplete information. Bayesian logic prescribes that individuals should do so by estimating the posterior probability by integrating the prior probability with new information, but the neural basis of this integration is incompletely understood. We record fMRI during a task in which participants infer the posterior probability of a hidden state while we independently modulate the prior probability and likelihood of evidence regarding the state; the task incentivizes participants to make accurate inferences and dissociates expected value from posterior probability. Here we show that activation in a region of left parieto-occipital cortex independently tracks the subjective posterior probability, combining its subcomponents of prior probability and evidence likelihood, and reflecting the individual participants' systematic deviations from objective probabilities. The parieto-occipital cortex is thus a candidate neural substrate for humans' ability to approximate Bayesian inference by integrating prior beliefs with new information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Nicholas M Singletary
- Doctoral Program in Neurobiology and Behavior, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
- Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
- Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
- New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA.
| | - Jacqueline Gottlieb
- Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
- Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
- Kavli Institute for Brain Science, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
| | - Guillermo Horga
- New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA.
- Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
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21
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Hauke DJ, Wobmann M, Andreou C, Mackintosh AJ, de Bock R, Karvelis P, Adams RA, Sterzer P, Borgwardt S, Roth V, Diaconescu AO. Altered Perception of Environmental Volatility During Social Learning in Emerging Psychosis. COMPUTATIONAL PSYCHIATRY (CAMBRIDGE, MASS.) 2024; 8:1-22. [PMID: 38774429 PMCID: PMC11104374 DOI: 10.5334/cpsy.95] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/02/2023] [Accepted: 12/15/2023] [Indexed: 05/24/2024]
Abstract
Paranoid delusions or unfounded beliefs that others intend to deliberately cause harm are a frequent and burdensome symptom in early psychosis, but their emergence and consolidation still remains opaque. Recent theories suggest that overly precise prediction errors lead to an unstable model of the world providing a breeding ground for delusions. Here, we employ a Bayesian approach to test for such an unstable model of the world and investigate the computational mechanisms underlying emerging paranoia. We modelled behaviour of 18 first-episode psychosis patients (FEP), 19 individuals at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P), and 19 healthy controls (HC) during an advice-taking task designed to probe learning about others' changing intentions. We formulated competing hypotheses comparing the standard Hierarchical Gaussian Filter (HGF), a Bayesian belief updating scheme, with a mean-reverting HGF to model an altered perception of volatility. There was a significant group-by-volatility interaction on advice-taking suggesting that CHR-P and FEP displayed reduced adaptability to environmental volatility. Model comparison favored the standard HGF in HC, but the mean-reverting HGF in CHR-P and FEP in line with perceiving increased volatility, although model attributions in CHR-P were heterogeneous. We observed correlations between perceiving increased volatility and positive symptoms generally as well as with frequency of paranoid delusions specifically. Our results suggest that FEP are characterised by a different computational mechanism - perceiving the environment as increasingly volatile - in line with Bayesian accounts of psychosis. This approach may prove useful to investigate heterogeneity in CHR-P and identify vulnerability for transition to psychosis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel J. Hauke
- Centre for Medical Image Computing, Department of Computer Science, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Michelle Wobmann
- Department of Psychiatry (UPK), University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Christina Andreou
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Translational Psychiatry, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany
| | | | - Renate de Bock
- Department of Psychiatry (UPK), University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Povilas Karvelis
- Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | - Rick A. Adams
- Centre for Medical Image Computing, Department of Computer Science, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- Max Planck Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom
| | - Philipp Sterzer
- Department of Psychiatry (UPK), University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Stefan Borgwardt
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Translational Psychiatry, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany
| | - Volker Roth
- Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Andreea O. Diaconescu
- Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
- Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
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22
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Orepic P, Bernasconi F, Faggella M, Faivre N, Blanke O. Robotically-induced auditory-verbal hallucinations: combining self-monitoring and strong perceptual priors. Psychol Med 2024; 54:569-581. [PMID: 37779256 DOI: 10.1017/s0033291723002222] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/03/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Inducing hallucinations under controlled experimental conditions in non-hallucinating individuals represents a novel research avenue oriented toward understanding complex hallucinatory phenomena, avoiding confounds observed in patients. Auditory-verbal hallucinations (AVH) are one of the most common and distressing psychotic symptoms, whose etiology remains largely unknown. Two prominent accounts portray AVH either as a deficit in auditory-verbal self-monitoring, or as a result of overly strong perceptual priors. METHODS In order to test both theoretical models and evaluate their potential integration, we developed a robotic procedure able to induce self-monitoring perturbations (consisting of sensorimotor conflicts between poking movements and corresponding tactile feedback) and a perceptual prior associated with otherness sensations (i.e. feeling the presence of a non-existing another person). RESULTS Here, in two independent studies, we show that this robotic procedure led to AVH-like phenomena in healthy individuals, quantified as an increase in false alarm rate in a voice detection task. Robotically-induced AVH-like sensations were further associated with delusional ideation and to both AVH accounts. Specifically, a condition with stronger sensorimotor conflicts induced more AVH-like sensations (self-monitoring), while, in the otherness-related experimental condition, there were more AVH-like sensations when participants were detecting other-voice stimuli, compared to detecting self-voice stimuli (strong-priors). CONCLUSIONS By demonstrating an experimental procedure able to induce AVH-like sensations in non-hallucinating individuals, we shed new light on AVH phenomenology, thereby integrating self-monitoring and strong-priors accounts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pavo Orepic
- Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuro-X Institute & Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Sciences, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Fosco Bernasconi
- Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuro-X Institute & Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Sciences, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Melissa Faggella
- Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuro-X Institute & Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Sciences, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Nathan Faivre
- University Grenoble Alpes, University Savoie Mont Blanc, CNRS, LPNC, 38000 Grenoble, France
| | - Olaf Blanke
- Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuro-X Institute & Brain Mind Institute, School of Life Sciences, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Geneva, Switzerland
- Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
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23
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De Filippo R, Schmitz D. Synthetic surprise as the foundation of the psychedelic experience. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 2024; 157:105538. [PMID: 38220035 PMCID: PMC10839673 DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105538] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/18/2023] [Revised: 01/03/2024] [Accepted: 01/05/2024] [Indexed: 01/16/2024]
Abstract
Psychedelic agents, such as LSD and psilocybin, induce marked alterations in consciousness via activation of the 5-HT2A receptor (5-HT2ARs). We hypothesize that psychedelics enforce a state of synthetic surprise through the biased activation of the 5-HTRs system. This idea is informed by recent insights into the role of 5-HT in signaling surprise. The effects on consciousness, explained by the cognitive penetrability of perception, can be described within the predictive coding framework where surprise corresponds to prediction error, the mismatch between predictions and actual sensory input. Crucially, the precision afforded to the prediction error determines its effect on priors, enabling a dynamic interaction between top-down expectations and incoming sensory data. By integrating recent findings on predictive coding circuitry and 5-HT2ARs transcriptomic data, we propose a biological implementation with emphasis on the role of inhibitory interneurons. Implications arise for the clinical use of psychedelics, which may rely primarily on their inherent capacity to induce surprise in order to disrupt maladaptive patterns.
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Affiliation(s)
- Roberto De Filippo
- Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Neuroscience Research Center, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
| | - Dietmar Schmitz
- Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Neuroscience Research Center, 10117 Berlin, Germany; German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) Berlin, 10117 Berlin, Germany; Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Einstein Center for Neuroscience, 10117 Berlin, Germany; Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence, 10117 Berlin, Germany; Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Philippstr. 13, 10115 Berlin, Germany
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24
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Jordan R. The locus coeruleus as a global model failure system. Trends Neurosci 2024; 47:92-105. [PMID: 38102059 DOI: 10.1016/j.tins.2023.11.006] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/13/2023] [Revised: 09/27/2023] [Accepted: 11/20/2023] [Indexed: 12/17/2023]
Abstract
Predictive processing models posit that brains constantly attempt to predict their sensory inputs. Prediction errors signal when these predictions are incorrect and are thought to be instructive signals that drive corrective plasticity. Recent findings support the idea that the locus coeruleus (LC) - a brain-wide neuromodulatory system - signals several types of prediction error. I discuss how these findings support models proposing that the LC signals global model failures: instances where predictions about the world are strongly violated. Focusing on the cortex, I explore the utility of this signal in learning rate control, how the LC circuit may compute the signal, and how this view may aid our understanding of neurodivergence.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rebecca Jordan
- Simons Initiative for the Developing Brain, University of Edinburgh, 1 George Square, EH8 9JZ, Edinburgh, UK.
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25
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Tandon R, Nasrallah H, Akbarian S, Carpenter WT, DeLisi LE, Gaebel W, Green MF, Gur RE, Heckers S, Kane JM, Malaspina D, Meyer-Lindenberg A, Murray R, Owen M, Smoller JW, Yassin W, Keshavan M. The schizophrenia syndrome, circa 2024: What we know and how that informs its nature. Schizophr Res 2024; 264:1-28. [PMID: 38086109 DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2023.11.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/06/2023] [Revised: 11/23/2023] [Accepted: 11/29/2023] [Indexed: 03/01/2024]
Abstract
With new data about different aspects of schizophrenia being continually generated, it becomes necessary to periodically revisit exactly what we know. Along with a need to review what we currently know about schizophrenia, there is an equal imperative to evaluate the construct itself. With these objectives, we undertook an iterative, multi-phase process involving fifty international experts in the field, with each step building on learnings from the prior one. This review assembles currently established findings about schizophrenia (construct, etiology, pathophysiology, clinical expression, treatment) and posits what they reveal about its nature. Schizophrenia is a heritable, complex, multi-dimensional syndrome with varying degrees of psychotic, negative, cognitive, mood, and motor manifestations. The illness exhibits a remitting and relapsing course, with varying degrees of recovery among affected individuals with most experiencing significant social and functional impairment. Genetic risk factors likely include thousands of common genetic variants that each have a small impact on an individual's risk and a plethora of rare gene variants that have a larger individual impact on risk. Their biological effects are concentrated in the brain and many of the same variants also increase the risk of other psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder, autism, and other neurodevelopmental conditions. Environmental risk factors include but are not limited to urban residence in childhood, migration, older paternal age at birth, cannabis use, childhood trauma, antenatal maternal infection, and perinatal hypoxia. Structural, functional, and neurochemical brain alterations implicate multiple regions and functional circuits. Dopamine D-2 receptor antagonists and partial agonists improve psychotic symptoms and reduce risk of relapse. Certain psychological and psychosocial interventions are beneficial. Early intervention can reduce treatment delay and improve outcomes. Schizophrenia is increasingly considered to be a heterogeneous syndrome and not a singular disease entity. There is no necessary or sufficient etiology, pathology, set of clinical features, or treatment that fully circumscribes this syndrome. A single, common pathophysiological pathway appears unlikely. The boundaries of schizophrenia remain fuzzy, suggesting the absence of a categorical fit and need to reconceptualize it as a broader, multi-dimensional and/or spectrum construct.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rajiv Tandon
- Department of Psychiatry, WMU Homer Stryker School of Medicine, Kalamazoo, MI 49008, United States of America.
| | - Henry Nasrallah
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine Cincinnati, OH 45267, United States of America
| | - Schahram Akbarian
- Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, New York, NY 10029, United States of America
| | - William T Carpenter
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201, United States of America
| | - Lynn E DeLisi
- Department of Psychiatry, Cambridge Health Alliance and Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States of America
| | - Wolfgang Gaebel
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, LVR-Klinikum Dusseldorf, Heinrich-Heine University, Dusseldorf, Germany
| | - Michael F Green
- Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, Jane and Terry Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90024, United States of America; Greater Los Angeles Veterans' Administration Healthcare System, United States of America
| | - Raquel E Gur
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States of America
| | - Stephan Heckers
- Department of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN 37232, United States of America
| | - John M Kane
- Department of Psychiatry, Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, Glen Oaks, NY 11004, United States of America
| | - Dolores Malaspina
- Department of Psychiatry, Neuroscience, Genetics, and Genomics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, New York, NY 10029, United States of America
| | - Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannhein/Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany
| | - Robin Murray
- Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, Kings College, London, UK
| | - Michael Owen
- Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics, and Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
| | - Jordan W Smoller
- Center for Precision Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Unit, Center for Genomic Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02114, United States of America
| | - Walid Yassin
- Department of Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, United States of America
| | - Matcheri Keshavan
- Department of Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, United States of America
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26
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Thakkar KN, Silverstein SM, Fattal J, Bao J, Slate R, Roberts D, Brascamp JW. Stronger tilt aftereffects in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia spectrum disorders but not bipolar disorder. Schizophr Res 2024; 264:345-353. [PMID: 38218020 PMCID: PMC10923089 DOI: 10.1016/j.schres.2023.12.029] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/09/2023] [Revised: 12/04/2023] [Accepted: 12/25/2023] [Indexed: 01/15/2024]
Abstract
An altered use of context and experience to interpret incoming information has been posited to explain schizophrenia symptoms. The visual system can serve as a model system for examining how context and experience guide perception and the neural mechanisms underlying putative alterations. The influence of prior experience on current perception is evident in visual aftereffects, the perception of the "opposite" of a previously viewed stimulus. Aftereffects are associated with neural adaptation and concomitant change in strength of lateral inhibitory connections in visually responsive neurons. In a previous study, we observed stronger aftereffects related to orientation (tilt aftereffects) but not luminance (negative afterimages) in individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, which we interpreted as potentially suggesting altered cortical (but not subcortical) adaptability and local changes in excitatory-inhibitory interactions. Here, we tested whether stronger tilt aftereffects were specific to individuals with schizophrenia or extended to individuals with bipolar disorder. We measured tilt aftereffects and negative afterimages in 32 individuals with bipolar disorder, and compared aftereffect strength to a previously reported group of 36 individuals with schizophrenia and 22 healthy controls. We observed stronger tilt aftereffects, but not negative afterimages, in individuals with schizophrenia as compared to both controls and individuals with bipolar disorder, who did not differ from each other. These results mitigate concerns that stronger tilt aftereffects in schizophrenia are a consequence of medication or of the psychosocial consequences of a severe mental illness.
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Affiliation(s)
- Katharine N Thakkar
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America; Division of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine, Michigan State University, Grand Rapids, MI, United States of America.
| | - Steven M Silverstein
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY, United States of America
| | - Jessica Fattal
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America
| | - Jacqueline Bao
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America; Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States of America
| | - Rachael Slate
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America
| | - Dominic Roberts
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America
| | - Jan W Brascamp
- Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States of America
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27
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Krcmar M, Wannan CMJ, Lavoie S, Allott K, Davey CG, Yuen HP, Whitford T, Formica M, Youn S, Shetty J, Beedham R, Rayner V, Murray G, Polari A, Gawęda Ł, Koren D, Sass L, Parnas J, Rasmussen AR, McGorry P, Hartmann JA, Nelson B. The self, neuroscience and psychosis study: Testing a neurophenomenological model of the onset of psychosis. Early Interv Psychiatry 2024; 18:153-164. [PMID: 37394278 DOI: 10.1111/eip.13448] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/28/2022] [Revised: 04/17/2023] [Accepted: 06/07/2023] [Indexed: 07/04/2023]
Abstract
AIM Basic self disturbance is a putative core vulnerability marker of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The primary aims of the Self, Neuroscience and Psychosis (SNAP) study are to: (1) empirically test a previously described neurophenomenological self-disturbance model of psychosis by examining the relationship between specific clinical, neurocognitive, and neurophysiological variables in UHR patients, and (2) develop a prediction model using these neurophenomenological disturbances for persistence or deterioration of UHR symptoms at 12-month follow-up. METHODS SNAP is a longitudinal observational study. Participants include 400 UHR individuals, 100 clinical controls with no attenuated psychotic symptoms, and 50 healthy controls. All participants complete baseline clinical and neurocognitive assessments and electroencephalography. The UHR sample are followed up for a total of 24 months, with clinical assessment completed every 6 months. RESULTS This paper presents the protocol of the SNAP study, including background rationale, aims and hypotheses, design, and assessment procedures. CONCLUSIONS The SNAP study will test whether neurophenomenological disturbances associated with basic self-disturbance predict persistence or intensification of UHR symptomatology over a 2-year follow up period, and how specific these disturbances are to a clinical population with attenuated psychotic symptoms. This may ultimately inform clinical care and pathoaetiological models of psychosis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marija Krcmar
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Cassandra M J Wannan
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Suzie Lavoie
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Kelly Allott
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Christopher G Davey
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Hok Pan Yuen
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Thomas Whitford
- School of Psychology, University of New South Wales (UNSW), Kensington, New South Wales, Australia
| | - Melanie Formica
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Sarah Youn
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Jashmina Shetty
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Rebecca Beedham
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Victoria Rayner
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Graham Murray
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
- Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, Cambridge, UK
| | - Andrea Polari
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Łukasz Gawęda
- Experimental Psychopathology Lab, Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
| | - Dan Koren
- Psychology Department, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
| | - Louis Sass
- Department of Clinical Psychology, GSAPP-Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA
| | - Josef Parnas
- Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - Andreas R Rasmussen
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
| | - Patrick McGorry
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Jessica A Hartmann
- Department of Public Mental Health, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany
| | - Barnaby Nelson
- Orygen, Parkville, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
- Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
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28
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Montobbio N, Zingarelli E, Folesani F, Memeo M, Croce E, Cavallo A, Grassi L, Fadiga L, Panzeri S, Belvederi Murri M, Becchio C. Action prediction in psychosis. SCHIZOPHRENIA (HEIDELBERG, GERMANY) 2024; 10:8. [PMID: 38200038 PMCID: PMC10851700 DOI: 10.1038/s41537-023-00429-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/30/2023] [Accepted: 12/22/2023] [Indexed: 01/12/2024]
Abstract
Aberrant motor-sensory predictive functions have been linked to symptoms of psychosis, particularly reduced attenuation of self-generated sensations and misattribution of self-generated actions. Building on the parallels between prediction of self- and other-generated actions, this study aims to investigate whether individuals with psychosis also demonstrate abnormal perceptions and predictions of others' actions. Patients with psychosis and matched controls completed a two-alternative object size discrimination task. In each trial, they observed reaching actions towards a small and a large object, with varying levels of temporal occlusion ranging from 10% to 80% of movement duration. Their task was to predict the size of the object that would be grasped. We employed a novel analytic approach to examine how object size information was encoded and read out across progressive levels of occlusion with single-trial resolution. Patients with psychosis exhibited an overall pattern of reduced and discontinuous evidence integration relative to controls, characterized by a period of null integration up to 20% of movement duration, during which they did not read any size information. Surprisingly, this drop in accuracy in the initial integration period was not accompanied by a reduction in confidence. Difficulties in action prediction were correlated with the severity of negative symptoms and impaired functioning in social relationships.
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Affiliation(s)
- Noemi Montobbio
- Center for Human Technologies, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Enrico Melen 83, 16152, Genoa, Italy
- Department of Health Sciences (DISSAL), University of Genoa, Via A. Pastore 1, 16132, Genoa, Italy
| | - Enrico Zingarelli
- Center for Human Technologies, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Enrico Melen 83, 16152, Genoa, Italy
| | - Federica Folesani
- Institute of Psychiatry, Department of Neuroscience and Rehabilitation, University of Ferrara, Via Fossato di Mortara 64, 44121, Ferrara, Italy
| | - Mariacarla Memeo
- Center for Human Technologies, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Enrico Melen 83, 16152, Genoa, Italy
| | - Enrico Croce
- Institute of Psychiatry, Department of Neuroscience and Rehabilitation, University of Ferrara, Via Fossato di Mortara 64, 44121, Ferrara, Italy
| | - Andrea Cavallo
- Center for Human Technologies, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Enrico Melen 83, 16152, Genoa, Italy
- Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Torino, Via Giuseppe Verdi, 10, 10124, Torino, Italy
| | - Luigi Grassi
- Institute of Psychiatry, Department of Neuroscience and Rehabilitation, University of Ferrara, Via Fossato di Mortara 64, 44121, Ferrara, Italy
| | - Luciano Fadiga
- Center for Translational Neurophysiology, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Fossato di Mortara 19, 44121, Ferrara, Italy
- Section of Physiology, Department of Neuroscience and Rehabilitation, University of Ferrara, Via Fossato di Mortara 19, 44121, Ferrara, Italy
| | - Stefano Panzeri
- Institute of Neural Information Processing, Center for Molecular Neurobiology (ZMNH), University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Falkenried 94, 20251, Hamburg, Germany
| | - Martino Belvederi Murri
- Institute of Psychiatry, Department of Neuroscience and Rehabilitation, University of Ferrara, Via Fossato di Mortara 64, 44121, Ferrara, Italy
| | - Cristina Becchio
- Center for Human Technologies, Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Enrico Melen 83, 16152, Genoa, Italy.
- Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Martinistraße 52, 20246, Hamburg, Germany.
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29
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Li J, Chen L, Zhou D, Tang E, Zheng J, Huang X, Zhong BL, Guan C, Liu H, Shen M, Chen H. Flexibility Retained: Unimpaired Updating of Expectations in Schizophrenia. Behav Sci (Basel) 2024; 14:41. [PMID: 38247693 PMCID: PMC10812936 DOI: 10.3390/bs14010041] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/23/2023] [Revised: 12/20/2023] [Accepted: 12/29/2023] [Indexed: 01/23/2024] Open
Abstract
Flexibly and actively updating expectations based on feedback is crucial for navigating daily life. Previous research has shown that people with schizophrenia (PSZ) have difficulty adjusting their expectations. However, there are studies suggesting otherwise. To explore this further, we used a novel trial-based expectation updating paradigm called attribute amnesia. In the task, the participants needed to report the location of a target stimulus among distractors in pre-surprise trials. In the surprise trial, they were unexpectedly asked to report the identity of the target before reporting its location. Afterward, control trials were conducted whereby the participants were asked the same questions as in the surprise trial. Notably, the surprise trial and control trials were nearly identical, except that the participants expected to be asked about identity information in the control trials but not in the surprise trial. Thus, an improvement in identity reporting accuracy in the control trials in comparison with the surprise trial indicated active updating of expectations. In the current study, a total of 63 PSZ and 60 healthy control subjects (HCS) were enrolled. We found that both the PSZ and the HCS were unable to report information that they had fully attended to (i.e., identity) in the surprise trial. However, both groups showed a significant improvement in reporting identity information even in the first control trial. Critically, there was no significant difference in the magnitude of improvement between the two groups. The current findings indicate that PSZ have the ability to update their expectations as quickly and flexibly as HCS, at least in the context of the current task. The possible factors that might contribute to the discrepancy regarding expectation updating are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jian Li
- Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310030, China
| | - Luo Chen
- Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310030, China
| | | | - Enze Tang
- Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310030, China
| | - Jiewei Zheng
- Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310030, China
| | - Xiaoqi Huang
- Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310030, China
| | - Bao-Liang Zhong
- Department of Psychiatry, Wuhan Mental Health Center, Wuhan 430022, China
| | - Chenxiao Guan
- Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310030, China
| | - Huiying Liu
- Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310030, China
| | - Mowei Shen
- Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310030, China
| | - Hui Chen
- Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310030, China
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Suzuki K, Seth AK, Schwartzman DJ. Modelling phenomenological differences in aetiologically distinct visual hallucinations using deep neural networks. Front Hum Neurosci 2024; 17:1159821. [PMID: 38234594 PMCID: PMC10791985 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2023.1159821] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/06/2023] [Accepted: 09/11/2023] [Indexed: 01/19/2024] Open
Abstract
Visual hallucinations (VHs) are perceptions of objects or events in the absence of the sensory stimulation that would normally support such perceptions. Although all VHs share this core characteristic, there are substantial phenomenological differences between VHs that have different aetiologies, such as those arising from Neurodegenerative conditions, visual loss, or psychedelic compounds. Here, we examine the potential mechanistic basis of these differences by leveraging recent advances in visualising the learned representations of a coupled classifier and generative deep neural network-an approach we call 'computational (neuro)phenomenology'. Examining three aetiologically distinct populations in which VHs occur-Neurodegenerative conditions (Parkinson's Disease and Lewy Body Dementia), visual loss (Charles Bonnet Syndrome, CBS), and psychedelics-we identified three dimensions relevant to distinguishing these classes of VHs: realism (veridicality), dependence on sensory input (spontaneity), and complexity. By selectively tuning the parameters of the visualisation algorithm to reflect influence along each of these phenomenological dimensions we were able to generate 'synthetic VHs' that were characteristic of the VHs experienced by each aetiology. We verified the validity of this approach experimentally in two studies that examined the phenomenology of VHs in Neurodegenerative and CBS patients, and in people with recent psychedelic experience. These studies confirmed the existence of phenomenological differences across these three dimensions between groups, and crucially, found that the appropriate synthetic VHs were rated as being representative of each group's hallucinatory phenomenology. Together, our findings highlight the phenomenological diversity of VHs associated with distinct causal factors and demonstrate how a neural network model of visual phenomenology can successfully capture the distinctive visual characteristics of hallucinatory experience.
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Affiliation(s)
- Keisuke Suzuki
- Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom
- Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom
- Center for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience (CHAIN), Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
| | - Anil K. Seth
- Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom
- Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom
- Program on Brain, Mind, and Consciousness, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - David J. Schwartzman
- Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom
- Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom
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Moccia L, di Luzio M, Conte E, Modica M, Ambrosecchia M, Ardizzi M, Lanzotti P, Kotzalidis GD, Janiri D, Di Nicola M, Janiri L, Gallese V, Sani G. Sense of agency and its disturbances: A systematic review targeting the intentional binding effect in neuropsychiatric disorders. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 2024; 78:3-18. [PMID: 37755315 DOI: 10.1111/pcn.13601] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2023] [Revised: 07/12/2023] [Accepted: 09/19/2023] [Indexed: 09/28/2023]
Abstract
Sense of agency (SoA) indicates a person's ability to perceive her/his own motor acts as actually being her/his and, through them, to exert control over the course of external events. Disruptions in SoA may profoundly affect the individual's functioning, as observed in several neuropsychiatric disorders. This is the first article to systematically review studies that investigated intentional binding (IB), a quantitative proxy for SoA measurement, in neurological and psychiatric patients. Eligible were studies of IB involving patients with neurological and/or psychiatric disorders. We included 15 studies involving 692 individuals. Risk of bias was low throughout studies. Abnormally increased action-outcome binding was found in schizophrenia and in patients with Parkinson's disease taking dopaminergic medications or reporting impulsive-compulsive behaviors. A decreased IB effect was observed in Tourette's disorder and functional movement disorders, whereas increased action-outcome binding was found in patients with the cortico-basal syndrome. The extent of IB deviation from healthy control values correlated with the severity of symptoms in several disorders. Inconsistent effects were found for autism spectrum disorders, anorexia nervosa, and borderline personality disorder. Findings pave the way for treatments specifically targeting SoA in neuropsychiatric disorders where IB is altered.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lorenzo Moccia
- Department of Neuroscience, Section of Psychiatry, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy
- Department of Psychiatry, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS, Rome, Italy
| | - Michelangelo di Luzio
- Child and Adolescent Neuropsychiatry Unit, Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital IRCCS, Rome, Italy
| | - Eliana Conte
- Department of Neuroscience, Section of Psychiatry, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy
| | - Marco Modica
- Department of Neuroscience, Section of Psychiatry, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy
| | - Marianna Ambrosecchia
- Department of Medicine and Surgery, Unit of Neuroscience, University of Parma, Parma, Italy
| | - Martina Ardizzi
- Department of Medicine and Surgery, Unit of Neuroscience, University of Parma, Parma, Italy
| | - Pierluigi Lanzotti
- Department of Neuroscience, Section of Psychiatry, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy
| | - Georgios D Kotzalidis
- Department of Neuroscience, Section of Psychiatry, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy
- NESMOS Department, University of Rome La Sapienza, Faculty of Medicine and Psychology, Sant'Andrea University Hospital, Rome, Italy
| | - Delfina Janiri
- Department of Neuroscience, Section of Psychiatry, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy
- Department of Psychiatry, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS, Rome, Italy
| | - Marco Di Nicola
- Department of Neuroscience, Section of Psychiatry, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy
- Department of Psychiatry, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS, Rome, Italy
| | - Luigi Janiri
- Department of Neuroscience, Section of Psychiatry, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy
- Department of Psychiatry, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS, Rome, Italy
| | - Vittorio Gallese
- Department of Medicine and Surgery, Unit of Neuroscience, University of Parma, Parma, Italy
- Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University, New York, New York, USA
| | - Gabriele Sani
- Department of Neuroscience, Section of Psychiatry, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy
- Department of Psychiatry, Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS, Rome, Italy
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32
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Rządeczka M, Wodziński M, Moskalewicz M. Cognitive biases as an adaptive strategy in autism and schizophrenia spectrum: the compensation perspective on neurodiversity. Front Psychiatry 2023; 14:1291854. [PMID: 38116384 PMCID: PMC10729319 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1291854] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/10/2023] [Accepted: 11/13/2023] [Indexed: 12/21/2023] Open
Abstract
This article presents a novel theoretical perspective on the role of cognitive biases within the autism and schizophrenia spectrum by integrating the evolutionary and computational approaches. Against the background of neurodiversity, cognitive biases are presented as primary adaptive strategies, while the compensation of their shortcomings is a potential cognitive advantage. The article delineates how certain subtypes of autism represent a unique cognitive strategy to manage cognitive biases at the expense of rapid and frugal heuristics. In contrast, certain subtypes of schizophrenia emerge as distinctive cognitive strategies devised to navigate social interactions, albeit with a propensity for overdetecting intentional behaviors. In conclusion, the paper emphasizes that while extreme manifestations might appear non-functional, they are merely endpoints of a broader, primarily functional spectrum of cognitive strategies. The central argument hinges on the premise that cognitive biases in both autism and schizophrenia spectrums serve as compensatory mechanisms tailored for specific ecological niches.
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Affiliation(s)
- Marcin Rządeczka
- Institute of Philosophy, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Lublin, Poland
- IDEAS NCBR, Warsaw, Poland
| | | | - Marcin Moskalewicz
- Institute of Philosophy, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Lublin, Poland
- IDEAS NCBR, Warsaw, Poland
- Philosophy of Mental Health Unit, Department of Social Sciences and the Humanities, Poznan University of Medical Sciences, Poznań, Poland
- Phenomenological Psychopathology and Psychotherapy, Psychiatric Clinic, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
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Alho J, Lahnakoski JM, Panula JM, Rikandi E, Mäntylä T, Lindgren M, Kieseppä T, Suvisaari J, Sams M, Raij TT. Hippocampus-Centered Network Is Associated With Positive Symptom Alleviation in Patients With First-Episode Psychosis. BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY. COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE AND NEUROIMAGING 2023; 8:1197-1206. [PMID: 37336263 DOI: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2023.06.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/09/2023] [Revised: 05/17/2023] [Accepted: 06/07/2023] [Indexed: 06/21/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have reported widespread brain functional connectivity alterations in patients with psychosis. These studies have mostly used either resting-state or simple-task paradigms, thereby compromising experimental control or ecological validity, respectively. Additionally, in a conventional functional magnetic resonance imaging intrasubject functional connectivity analysis, it is difficult to identify which connections relate to extrinsic (stimulus-induced) and which connections relate to intrinsic (non-stimulus-related) neural processes. METHODS To mitigate these limitations, we used intersubject functional connectivity (ISFC) to analyze longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging data collected while 36 individuals with first-episode psychosis (FEP) and 29 age- and sex-matched population control participants watched scenes from the fantasy movie Alice in Wonderland at baseline and again at 1-year follow-up. Furthermore, to allow unconfounded comparison and to overcome possible circularity of ISFC, we introduced a novel approach wherein ISFC in both the FEP and population control groups was calculated with respect to an independent group of participants (not included in the analyses). RESULTS Using this independent-reference ISFC approach, we found an interaction effect wherein the independent-reference ISFC in individuals with FEP, but not in the control group participants, was significantly stronger at baseline than at follow-up in a network centered in the hippocampus and involving thalamic, striatal, and cortical regions, such as the orbitofrontal cortex. Alleviation of positive symptoms, particularly delusions, from baseline to follow-up was correlated with decreased network connectivity in patients with FEP. CONCLUSIONS These findings link deviation of naturalistic information processing in the hippocampus-centered network to positive symptoms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jussi Alho
- Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University School of Science, Espoo, Finland; Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
| | - Juha M Lahnakoski
- Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Brain, & Behaviour (INM-7), Research Center Jülich, Jülich, Germany; Institute of Systems Neuroscience, Medical Faculty, Heinrich-Heine-universität Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany; Independent Max Planck Research Group for Social Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
| | - Jonatan M Panula
- Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University School of Science, Espoo, Finland
| | - Eva Rikandi
- Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University School of Science, Espoo, Finland; Mental Health Team, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland; Department of Psychology and Logopedics, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Teemu Mäntylä
- Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University School of Science, Espoo, Finland; Mental Health Team, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland; Department of Psychology and Logopedics, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Maija Lindgren
- Mental Health Team, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Tuula Kieseppä
- Mental Health Team, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Jaana Suvisaari
- Mental Health Team, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland
| | - Mikko Sams
- Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University School of Science, Espoo, Finland
| | - Tuukka T Raij
- Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Aalto University School of Science, Espoo, Finland; Department of Psychiatry, Helsinki University and Helsinki University Hospital, Helsinki, Finland; Advanced Magnetic Imaging Centre, Aalto NeuroImaging, Aalto University School of Science, Espoo, Finland.
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Hauke DJ, Charlton CE, Schmidt A, Griffiths JD, Woods SW, Ford JM, Srihari VH, Roth V, Diaconescu AO, Mathalon DH. Aberrant Hierarchical Prediction Errors Are Associated With Transition to Psychosis: A Computational Single-Trial Analysis of the Mismatch Negativity. BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY. COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE AND NEUROIMAGING 2023; 8:1176-1185. [PMID: 37536567 DOI: 10.1016/j.bpsc.2023.07.011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/03/2023] [Revised: 07/18/2023] [Accepted: 07/20/2023] [Indexed: 08/05/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Mismatch negativity reductions are among the most reliable biomarkers for schizophrenia and have been associated with increased risk for conversion to psychosis in individuals who are at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR-P). Here, we adopted a computational approach to develop a mechanistic model of mismatch negativity reductions in CHR-P individuals and patients early in the course of schizophrenia. METHODS Electroencephalography was recorded in 38 CHR-P individuals (15 converters), 19 patients early in the course of schizophrenia (≤5 years), and 44 healthy control participants during three different auditory oddball mismatch negativity paradigms including 10% duration, frequency, or double deviants, respectively. We modeled sensory learning with the hierarchical Gaussian filter and extracted precision-weighted prediction error trajectories from the model to assess how the expression of hierarchical prediction errors modulated electroencephalography amplitudes over sensor space and time. RESULTS Both low-level sensory and high-level volatility precision-weighted prediction errors were altered in CHR-P individuals and patients early in the course of schizophrenia compared with healthy control participants. Moreover, low-level precision-weighted prediction errors were significantly different in CHR-P individuals who later converted to psychosis compared with nonconverters. CONCLUSIONS Our results implicate altered processing of hierarchical prediction errors as a computational mechanism in early psychosis consistent with predictive coding accounts of psychosis. This computational model seems to capture pathophysiological mechanisms that are relevant to early psychosis and the risk for future psychosis in CHR-P individuals and may serve as predictive biomarkers and mechanistic targets for the development of novel treatments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel J Hauke
- Centre for Medical Image Computing, Department of Computer Science, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
| | - Colleen E Charlton
- Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | - André Schmidt
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
| | - John D Griffiths
- Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | - Scott W Woods
- Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut
| | - Judith M Ford
- Mental Health Service, Veterans Affairs San Francisco Health Care System, San Francisco, California; Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California
| | - Vinod H Srihari
- Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut
| | - Volker Roth
- Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Andreea O Diaconescu
- Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
| | - Daniel H Mathalon
- Mental Health Service, Veterans Affairs San Francisco Health Care System, San Francisco, California; Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California
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Harduf A, Panishev G, Harel EV, Stern Y, Salomon R. The bodily self from psychosis to psychedelics. Sci Rep 2023; 13:21209. [PMID: 38040825 PMCID: PMC10692325 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-47600-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/24/2023] [Accepted: 11/16/2023] [Indexed: 12/03/2023] Open
Abstract
The sense of self is a foundational element of neurotypical human consciousness. We normally experience the world as embodied agents, with the unified sensation of our selfhood being nested in our body. Critically, the sense of self can be altered in psychiatric conditions such as psychosis and altered states of consciousness induced by psychedelic compounds. The similarity of phenomenological effects across psychosis and psychedelic experiences has given rise to the "psychotomimetic" theory suggesting that psychedelics simulate psychosis-like states. Moreover, psychedelic-induced changes in the sense of self have been related to reported improvements in mental health. Here we investigated the bodily self in psychedelic, psychiatric, and control populations. Using the Moving Rubber Hand Illusion, we tested (N = 75) patients with psychosis, participants with a history of substantial psychedelic experiences, and control participants to see how psychedelic and psychiatric experience impacts the bodily self. Results revealed that psychosis patients had reduced Body Ownership and Sense of Agency during volitional action. The psychedelic group reported subjective long-lasting changes to the sense of self, but no differences between control and psychedelic participants were found. Our results suggest that while psychedelics induce both acute and enduring subjective changes in the sense of self, these are not manifested at the level of the bodily self. Furthermore, our data show that bodily self-processing, related to volitional action, is disrupted in psychosis patients. We discuss these findings in relation to anomalous self-processing across psychedelic and psychotic experiences.
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Affiliation(s)
- Amir Harduf
- The Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, 5290002, Ramat-Gan, Israel
- The Faculty of Life Sciences, Bar-Ilan University, 5290002, Ramat-Gan, Israel
| | - Gabriella Panishev
- The Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, 5290002, Ramat-Gan, Israel
| | - Eiran V Harel
- Beer Yaakov-Ness Ziona Mental Health Center, Beer Yaakov, Israel
| | - Yonatan Stern
- The Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, 5290002, Ramat-Gan, Israel
- Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of Haifa, 3498838, Haifa, Israel
| | - Roy Salomon
- Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of Haifa, 3498838, Haifa, Israel.
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Weilnhammer V, Stuke H, Standvoss K, Sterzer P. Sensory processing in humans and mice fluctuates between external and internal modes. PLoS Biol 2023; 21:e3002410. [PMID: 38064502 PMCID: PMC10732408 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002410] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/26/2023] [Revised: 12/20/2023] [Accepted: 10/30/2023] [Indexed: 12/21/2023] Open
Abstract
Perception is known to cycle through periods of enhanced and reduced sensitivity to external information. Here, we asked whether such slow fluctuations arise as a noise-related epiphenomenon of limited processing capacity or, alternatively, represent a structured mechanism of perceptual inference. Using 2 large-scale datasets, we found that humans and mice alternate between externally and internally oriented modes of sensory analysis. During external mode, perception aligns more closely with the external sensory information, whereas internal mode is characterized by enhanced biases toward perceptual history. Computational modeling indicated that dynamic changes in mode are enabled by 2 interlinked factors: (i) the integration of subsequent inputs over time and (ii) slow antiphase oscillations in the impact of external sensory information versus internal predictions that are provided by perceptual history. We propose that between-mode fluctuations generate unambiguous error signals that enable optimal inference in volatile environments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Veith Weilnhammer
- Department of Psychiatry, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Berlin Institute of Health, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Max Delbrück Center, Berlin, Germany
- Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States of America
| | - Heiner Stuke
- Department of Psychiatry, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
- Berlin Institute of Health, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Max Delbrück Center, Berlin, Germany
| | - Kai Standvoss
- Department of Psychiatry, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany
| | - Philipp Sterzer
- Department of Psychiatry (UPK), University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
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37
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Mihali A, Broeker M, Ragalmuto FDM, Horga G. Introspective inference counteracts perceptual distortion. Nat Commun 2023; 14:7826. [PMID: 38030601 PMCID: PMC10687029 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-42813-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2022] [Accepted: 10/23/2023] [Indexed: 12/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Introspective agents can recognize the extent to which their internal perceptual experiences deviate from the actual states of the external world. This ability, also known as insight, is critically required for reality testing and is impaired in psychosis, yet little is known about its cognitive underpinnings. We develop a Bayesian modeling framework and a psychophysics paradigm to quantitatively characterize this type of insight while people experience a motion after-effect illusion. People can incorporate knowledge about the illusion into their decisions when judging the actual direction of a motion stimulus, compensating for the illusion (and often overcompensating). Furthermore, confidence, reaction-time, and pupil-dilation data all show signatures consistent with inferential adjustments in the Bayesian insight model. Our results suggest that people can question the veracity of what they see by making insightful inferences that incorporate introspective knowledge about internal distortions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andra Mihali
- New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA.
- Columbia University, Department of Psychiatry, New York, NY, USA.
| | - Marianne Broeker
- New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA
- Columbia University, Department of Psychiatry, New York, NY, USA
- Columbia University, Teachers College, New York, NY, USA
- University of Oxford, Department of Experimental Psychology, Oxford, UK
| | - Florian D M Ragalmuto
- New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA
- Columbia University, Department of Psychiatry, New York, NY, USA
- Vrije Universiteit, Faculty of Behavioral and Movement Science, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- Berliner FortbildungsAkademie, Berlin, DE, Germany
| | - Guillermo Horga
- New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY, USA.
- Columbia University, Department of Psychiatry, New York, NY, USA.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESIS The neurocomputational framework of predictive processing (PP) provides a promising approach to explaining delusions, a key symptom of psychotic disorders. According to PP, the brain makes inferences about the world by weighing prior beliefs against the available sensory data. Mismatches between prior beliefs and sensory data result in prediction errors that may update the brain's model of the world. Psychosis has been associated with reduced weighting of priors relative to the sensory data. However, delusional beliefs are highly resistant to change, suggesting increased rather than decreased weighting of priors. We propose that this "delusion paradox" can be resolved within a hierarchical PP model: Reduced weighting of prior beliefs at low hierarchical levels may be compensated by an increased influence of higher-order beliefs represented at high hierarchical levels, including delusional beliefs. This may sculpt perceptual processing into conformity with delusions and foster their resistance to contradictory evidence. STUDY DESIGN We review several lines of experimental evidence on low- and high-level processes, and their neurocognitive underpinnings in delusion-related phenotypes and link them to predicted processing. STUDY RESULTS The reviewed evidence supports the notion of decreased weighting of low-level priors and increased weighting of high-level priors, in both delusional and delusion-prone individuals. Moreover, we highlight the role of prefrontal cortex as a neural basis for the increased weighting of high-level prior beliefs and discuss possible clinical implications of the proposed hierarchical predictive-processing model. CONCLUSIONS Our review suggests the delusion paradox can be resolved within a hierarchical PP model.
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Affiliation(s)
- Predrag Petrovic
- Center for Psychiatry Research (CPF), Center for Cognitive and Computational Neuropsychiatry (CCNP), Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Philipp Sterzer
- Department of Psychiatry (UPK), University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
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39
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Rummell BP, Bikas S, Babl SS, Gogos JA, Sigurdsson T. Altered corollary discharge signaling in the auditory cortex of a mouse model of schizophrenia predisposition. Nat Commun 2023; 14:7388. [PMID: 37968289 PMCID: PMC10651874 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-42964-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/13/2022] [Accepted: 10/27/2023] [Indexed: 11/17/2023] Open
Abstract
The ability to distinguish sensations that are self-generated from those caused by external events is disrupted in schizophrenia patients. However, the neural circuit abnormalities underlying this sensory impairment and its relationship to the risk factors for the disease is not well understood. To address this, we examined the processing of self-generated sounds in male Df(16)A+/- mice, which model one of the largest genetic risk factors for schizophrenia, the 22q11.2 microdeletion. We find that auditory cortical neurons in Df(16)A+/- mice fail to attenuate their responses to self-generated sounds, recapitulating deficits seen in schizophrenia patients. Notably, the auditory cortex of Df(16)A+/- mice displayed weaker motor-related signals and received fewer inputs from the motor cortex, suggesting an anatomical basis underlying the sensory deficit. These results provide insights into the mechanisms by which a major genetic risk factor for schizophrenia disrupts the top-down processing of sensory information.
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Affiliation(s)
- Brian P Rummell
- Institute of Neurophysiology, Goethe University, Theodor-Stern Kai 7, 60590, Frankfurt, Germany
- Ernst Strüngmann Institute (ESI) for Neuroscience in Cooperation with Max Planck Society, 60528, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
| | - Solmaz Bikas
- Institute of Neurophysiology, Goethe University, Theodor-Stern Kai 7, 60590, Frankfurt, Germany
| | - Susanne S Babl
- Institute of Neurophysiology, Goethe University, Theodor-Stern Kai 7, 60590, Frankfurt, Germany
| | - Joseph A Gogos
- Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain and Behavior Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA
- Departments of Physiology, Neuroscience and Psychiatry, Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10032, USA
| | - Torfi Sigurdsson
- Institute of Neurophysiology, Goethe University, Theodor-Stern Kai 7, 60590, Frankfurt, Germany.
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40
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Goodwin I, Kugel J, Hester R, Garrido MI. Bayesian accounts of perceptual decisions in the nonclinical continuum of psychosis: Greater imprecision in both top-down and bottom-up processes. PLoS Comput Biol 2023; 19:e1011670. [PMID: 37988398 PMCID: PMC10697609 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011670] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/07/2023] [Revised: 12/05/2023] [Accepted: 11/07/2023] [Indexed: 11/23/2023] Open
Abstract
Neurocomputational accounts of psychosis propose mechanisms for how information is integrated into a predictive model of the world, in attempts to understand the occurrence of altered perceptual experiences. Conflicting Bayesian theories postulate aberrations in either top-down or bottom-up processing. The top-down theory predicts an overreliance on prior beliefs or expectations resulting in aberrant perceptual experiences, whereas the bottom-up theory predicts an overreliance on current sensory information, as aberrant salience is directed towards objectively uninformative stimuli. This study empirically adjudicates between these models. We use a perceptual decision-making task in a neurotypical population with varying degrees of psychotic-like experiences. Bayesian modelling was used to compute individuals' reliance on prior relative to sensory information. Across two datasets (discovery dataset n = 363; independent replication in validation dataset n = 782) we showed that psychotic-like experiences were associated with an overweighting of sensory information relative to prior expectations, which seem to be driven by decreased precision afforded to prior information. However, when prior information was more uncertain, participants with greater psychotic-like experiences encoded sensory information with greater noise. Greater psychotic-like experiences were associated with aberrant precision in the encoding both prior and likelihood information, which we suggest may be related to generally heightened perceptions of task instability. Our study lends empirical support to notions of both weaker bottom-up and weaker (rather than stronger) top-down perceptual processes, as well as aberrancies in belief updating that extend into the non-clinical continuum of psychosis.
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Affiliation(s)
- Isabella Goodwin
- Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Joshua Kugel
- School of Psychology and Psychiatry, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Robert Hester
- Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
| | - Marta I. Garrido
- Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Graeme Clark Institute for Biomedical Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
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41
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Ghaneirad E, Borgolte A, Sinke C, Čuš A, Bleich S, Szycik GR. The effect of multisensory semantic congruency on unisensory object recognition in schizophrenia. Front Psychiatry 2023; 14:1246879. [PMID: 38025441 PMCID: PMC10646423 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1246879] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/24/2023] [Accepted: 10/16/2023] [Indexed: 12/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Multisensory, as opposed to unisensory processing of stimuli, has been found to enhance the performance (e.g., reaction time, accuracy, and discrimination) of healthy individuals across various tasks. However, this enhancement is not as pronounced in patients with schizophrenia (SZ), indicating impaired multisensory integration (MSI) in these individuals. To the best of our knowledge, no study has yet investigated the impact of MSI deficits in the context of working memory, a domain highly reliant on multisensory processing and substantially impaired in schizophrenia. To address this research gap, we employed two adopted versions of the continuous object recognition task to investigate the effect of single-trail multisensory encoding on subsequent object recognition in 21 schizophrenia patients and 21 healthy controls (HC). Participants were tasked with discriminating between initial and repeated presentations. For the initial presentations, half of the stimuli were audiovisual pairings, while the other half were presented unimodal. The task-relevant stimuli were then presented a second time in a unisensory manner (either auditory stimuli in the auditory task or visual stimuli in the visual task). To explore the impact of semantic context on multisensory encoding, half of the audiovisual pairings were selected to be semantically congruent, while the remaining pairs were not semantically related to each other. Consistent with prior studies, our findings demonstrated that the impact of single-trial multisensory presentation during encoding remains discernible during subsequent object recognition. This influence could be distinguished based on the semantic congruity between the auditory and visual stimuli presented during the encoding. This effect was more robust in the auditory task. In the auditory task, when congruent multisensory pairings were encoded, both participant groups demonstrated a multisensory facilitation effect. This effect resulted in improved accuracy and RT performance. Regarding incongruent audiovisual encoding, as expected, HC did not demonstrate an evident multisensory facilitation effect on memory performance. In contrast, SZs exhibited an atypically accelerated reaction time during the subsequent auditory object recognition. Based on the predictive coding model we propose that this observed deviations indicate a reduced semantic modulatory effect and anomalous predictive errors signaling, particularly in the context of conflicting cross-modal sensory inputs in SZ.
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Affiliation(s)
- Erfan Ghaneirad
- Department of Psychiatry, Social Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Hannover Medical School, Hanover, Germany
| | - Anna Borgolte
- Department of Psychiatry, Social Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Hannover Medical School, Hanover, Germany
| | - Christopher Sinke
- Department of Psychiatry, Social Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Division of Clinical Psychology and Sexual Medicine, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany
| | - Anja Čuš
- Department of Psychiatry, Social Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Hannover Medical School, Hanover, Germany
| | - Stefan Bleich
- Department of Psychiatry, Social Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Hannover Medical School, Hanover, Germany
- Center for Systems Neuroscience, University of Veterinary Medicine, Hanover, Germany
| | - Gregor R. Szycik
- Department of Psychiatry, Social Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Hannover Medical School, Hanover, Germany
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Sprevak M, Smith R. An Introduction to Predictive Processing Models of Perception and Decision-Making. Top Cogn Sci 2023. [PMID: 37899002 DOI: 10.1111/tops.12704] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/03/2023] [Revised: 08/30/2023] [Accepted: 10/06/2023] [Indexed: 10/31/2023]
Abstract
The predictive processing framework includes a broad set of ideas, which might be articulated and developed in a variety of ways, concerning how the brain may leverage predictive models when implementing perception, cognition, decision-making, and motor control. This article provides an up-to-date introduction to the two most influential theories within this framework: predictive coding and active inference. The first half of the paper (Sections 2-5) reviews the evolution of predictive coding, from early ideas about efficient coding in the visual system to a more general model encompassing perception, cognition, and motor control. The theory is characterized in terms of the claims it makes at Marr's computational, algorithmic, and implementation levels of description, and the conceptual and mathematical connections between predictive coding, Bayesian inference, and variational free energy (a quantity jointly evaluating model accuracy and complexity) are explored. The second half of the paper (Sections 6-8) turns to recent theories of active inference. Like predictive coding, active inference models assume that perceptual and learning processes minimize variational free energy as a means of approximating Bayesian inference in a biologically plausible manner. However, these models focus primarily on planning and decision-making processes that predictive coding models were not developed to address. Under active inference, an agent evaluates potential plans (action sequences) based on their expected free energy (a quantity that combines anticipated reward and information gain). The agent is assumed to represent the world as a partially observable Markov decision process with discrete time and discrete states. Current research applications of active inference models are described, including a range of simulation work, as well as studies fitting models to empirical data. The paper concludes by considering future research directions that will be important for further development of both models.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mark Sprevak
- School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh
| | - Ryan Smith
- Laureate Institute for Brain Research, Tulsa, Oklahoma
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43
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Bramley NR, Zhao B, Quillien T, Lucas CG. Local Search and the Evolution of World Models. Top Cogn Sci 2023. [PMID: 37850714 DOI: 10.1111/tops.12703] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/14/2023] [Revised: 10/02/2023] [Accepted: 10/03/2023] [Indexed: 10/19/2023]
Abstract
An open question regarding how people develop their models of the world is how new candidates are generated for consideration out of infinitely many possibilities. We discuss the role that evolutionary mechanisms play in this process. Specifically, we argue that when it comes to developing a global world model, innovation is necessarily incremental, involving the generation and selection among random local mutations and recombinations of (parts of) one's current model. We argue that, by narrowing and guiding exploration, this feature of cognitive search is what allows human learners to discover better theories, without ever grappling directly with the problem of finding a "global optimum," or best possible world model. We suggest this aspect of cognitive processing works analogously to how blind variation and selection mechanisms drive biological evolution. We propose algorithms developed for program synthesis provide candidate mechanisms for how human minds might achieve this. We discuss objections and implications of this perspective, finally suggesting that a better process-level understanding of how humans incrementally explore compositional theory spaces can shed light on how we think, and provide explanatory traction on fundamental cognitive biases, including anchoring, probability matching, and confirmation bias.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Bonan Zhao
- Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh
| | - Tadeg Quillien
- Institute of Language, Cognition & Computation, Informatics University of Edinburgh
| | - Christopher G Lucas
- Institute of Language, Cognition & Computation, Informatics University of Edinburgh
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44
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von Gal A, Boccia M, Nori R, Verde P, Giannini AM, Piccardi L. Neural networks underlying visual illusions: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis. Neuroimage 2023; 279:120335. [PMID: 37591478 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120335] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/13/2023] [Revised: 07/05/2023] [Accepted: 08/14/2023] [Indexed: 08/19/2023] Open
Abstract
Visual illusions have long been used to study visual perception and contextual integration. Neuroimaging studies employ illusions to identify the brain regions involved in visual perception and how they interact. We conducted an Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) meta-analysis and meta-analytic connectivity modeling on fMRI studies using static and motion illusions to reveal the neural signatures of illusory processing and to investigate the degree to which different areas are commonly recruited in perceptual inference. The resulting networks encompass ventral and dorsal regions, including the inferior and middle occipital cortices bilaterally in both types of illusions. The static and motion illusion networks selectively included the right posterior parietal cortex and the ventral premotor cortex respectively. Overall, these results describe a network of areas crucially involved in perceptual inference relying on feed-back and feed-forward interactions between areas of the ventral and dorsal visual pathways. The same network is proposed to be involved in hallucinogenic symptoms characteristic of schizophrenia and other disorders, with crucial implications in the use of illusions as biomarkers.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Maddalena Boccia
- Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy; Cognitive and Motor Rehabilitation and Neuroimaging Unit, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy
| | - Raffaella Nori
- Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
| | - Paola Verde
- Italian Air Force Experimental Flight Center, Aerospace Medicine Department, Pratica di Mare, Rome, Italy
| | | | - Laura Piccardi
- Department of Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy; San Raffaele Cassino Hospital, Cassino, FR, Italy
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45
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Pan Y, Wen Y, Jin J, Chen J. The interpersonal computational psychiatry of social coordination in schizophrenia. Lancet Psychiatry 2023; 10:801-808. [PMID: 37478889 DOI: 10.1016/s2215-0366(23)00146-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/09/2023] [Revised: 04/13/2023] [Accepted: 04/13/2023] [Indexed: 07/23/2023]
Abstract
Impairments in social coordination form a core dimension of various psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. Advances in interpersonal and computational psychiatry support a major change in studying social coordination in schizophrenia. Although these developments provided novel perspectives to study how interpersonal activities shape coordination and to examine computational mechanisms, direct attempts to integrate the two methodologies have been sparse. Here, we propose an interpersonal computational framework that (1) leverages the active inference framework to model aberrant social coordination processes in schizophrenia and (2) incorporates dynamical system models to dissect intrapersonal and interpersonal synchronisation to inform a statistical model based on active inference. We discuss how this interpersonal computational psychiatry framework can elucidate the aberrant processes leading to psychopathology, with schizophrenia as an example, and highlight how it might aid clinical intervention and practice. Finally, we discuss challenges and opportunities for using the framework in studying social coordination impairments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yafeng Pan
- Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
| | - Yalan Wen
- Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
| | - Jingwen Jin
- Department of Psychology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China; State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China
| | - Ji Chen
- Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China; Department of Psychiatry, The Fourth Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Yiwu, Zhejiang, China.
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46
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O'Toole SM, Oyibo HK, Keller GB. Molecularly targetable cell types in mouse visual cortex have distinguishable prediction error responses. Neuron 2023; 111:2918-2928.e8. [PMID: 37708892 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2023.08.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/10/2022] [Revised: 04/19/2023] [Accepted: 08/14/2023] [Indexed: 09/16/2023]
Abstract
Predictive processing postulates the existence of prediction error neurons in cortex. Neurons with both negative and positive prediction error response properties have been identified in layer 2/3 of visual cortex, but whether they correspond to transcriptionally defined subpopulations is unclear. Here we used the activity-dependent, photoconvertible marker CaMPARI2 to tag neurons in layer 2/3 of mouse visual cortex during stimuli and behaviors designed to evoke prediction errors. We performed single-cell RNA-sequencing on these populations and found that previously annotated Adamts2 and Rrad layer 2/3 transcriptional cell types were enriched when photolabeling during stimuli that drive negative or positive prediction error responses, respectively. Finally, we validated these results functionally by designing artificial promoters for use in AAV vectors to express genetically encoded calcium indicators. Thus, transcriptionally distinct cell types in layer 2/3 that can be targeted using AAV vectors exhibit distinguishable negative and positive prediction error responses.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sean M O'Toole
- Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Hassana K Oyibo
- Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland
| | - Georg B Keller
- Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, Basel, Switzerland; Faculty of Science, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
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47
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Isomura T, Kotani K, Jimbo Y, Friston KJ. Experimental validation of the free-energy principle with in vitro neural networks. Nat Commun 2023; 14:4547. [PMID: 37550277 PMCID: PMC10406890 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40141-z] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/12/2022] [Accepted: 07/13/2023] [Indexed: 08/09/2023] Open
Abstract
Empirical applications of the free-energy principle are not straightforward because they entail a commitment to a particular process theory, especially at the cellular and synaptic levels. Using a recently established reverse engineering technique, we confirm the quantitative predictions of the free-energy principle using in vitro networks of rat cortical neurons that perform causal inference. Upon receiving electrical stimuli-generated by mixing two hidden sources-neurons self-organised to selectively encode the two sources. Pharmacological up- and downregulation of network excitability disrupted the ensuing inference, consistent with changes in prior beliefs about hidden sources. As predicted, changes in effective synaptic connectivity reduced variational free energy, where the connection strengths encoded parameters of the generative model. In short, we show that variational free energy minimisation can quantitatively predict the self-organisation of neuronal networks, in terms of their responses and plasticity. These results demonstrate the applicability of the free-energy principle to in vitro neural networks and establish its predictive validity in this setting.
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Affiliation(s)
- Takuya Isomura
- Brain Intelligence Theory Unit, RIKEN Center for Brain Science, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama, 351-0198, Japan.
| | - Kiyoshi Kotani
- Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 153-8904, Japan
| | - Yasuhiko Jimbo
- Department of Precision Engineering, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan
| | - Karl J Friston
- Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging, Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, WC1N 3AR, UK
- VERSES AI Research Lab, Los Angeles, CA, 90016, USA
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48
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Xiao NG, Emberson LL. Visual Perception Is Highly Flexible and Context Dependent in Young Infants: A Case of Top-Down-Modulated Motion Perception. Psychol Sci 2023; 34:875-886. [PMID: 37310866 PMCID: PMC10477967 DOI: 10.1177/09567976231177968] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/18/2020] [Accepted: 04/19/2023] [Indexed: 06/15/2023] Open
Abstract
Top-down modulation is an essential cognitive component in human perception. Despite mounting evidence of top-down perceptual modulation in adults, it is largely unknown whether infants can engage in this cognitive function. Here, we examined top-down modulation of motion perception in 6- to 8-month-old infants (recruited in North America) via their smooth-pursuit eye movements. In four experiments, we demonstrated that infants' perception of motion direction can be flexibly shaped by briefly learned predictive cues when no coherent motion is available. The current findings present a novel insight into infant perception and its development: Infant perceptual systems respond to predictive signals engendered from higher-level learning systems, leading to a flexible and context-dependent modulation of perception. This work also suggests that the infant brain is sophisticated, interconnected, and active when placed in a context in which it can learn and predict.
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Affiliation(s)
- Naiqi G. Xiao
- Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University
| | - Lauren L. Emberson
- Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia
- Department of Psychology, Princeton University
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49
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Prasannakumar A, Kumar V, Rao NP. Trust and psychosis: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychol Med 2023; 53:5218-5226. [PMID: 35975354 DOI: 10.1017/s0033291722002562] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/07/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Impaired trust in other humans is commonly seen in psychosis and it leads to poor societal functioning. However, examining trust behavior in an experimental setting is challenging. Investigators have used the trust game, a neuro-economic game to assess trust behavior in psychosis. However, the findings are inconsistent. Hence, we systematically reviewed the existing literature and conducted a meta-analysis to examine trust behavior in patients with psychosis, their relatives, and those at high risk for psychosis. METHODS We searched electronic databases for studies that have examined trust game in patients with psychosis, published up to November 2021. The primary outcome measure was the baseline trust in a trust game by patients and controls. The meta-analysis was performed if at least three data sets of control and patient groups were available for that measure/design. We conducted meta-analyses with a random-effects model. The results were described narratively wherever meta-analysis was not possible due to paucity of studies. RESULTS The searches across the databases including cross-references yielded 465 publications of which 10 studies were included in the final analysis. Baseline trust in the trust game was significantly lower in patients with psychosis compared to controls (SMD 0.39, 95% CI -0.14 to 0.64, p -0.002). However, a similar decrease in baseline trust was not present in relatives of patients (SMD 0.08, 95% CI -0.20 to 0.36, p -0.58). CONCLUSIONS The current meta-analysis suggests significant trust deficits in patients with psychosis. Future studies with a bigger sample size are required to understand the nature of trust deficits and factors affecting this impairment.
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Affiliation(s)
- Akash Prasannakumar
- Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India
| | - Vijay Kumar
- Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India
| | - Naren P Rao
- Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore, India
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50
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Fischman L. Touching and being touched: where knowing and feeling meet. Front Psychol 2023; 14:1097402. [PMID: 37533722 PMCID: PMC10393247 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1097402] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/13/2022] [Accepted: 06/05/2023] [Indexed: 08/04/2023] Open
Abstract
Philosophers maintain that touch confers a sense of reality or grounding to perceptual experience. In touching oneself, one is simultaneously both subject and object of touch, a template for experiencing oneself as subject and object of intentions, feelings, and motivations, or intersubjectivity. Here, I explore a form of self-touch carefully documented by Winnicott in observing how the infant engages the transitional object. I compare the processes of self-loss in transitional states, including absorption in art, empathic immersion, drug-induced ego dissolution, and depersonalization. I use examples drawn from Rodin, Dante, and the Beatles; research correlating neurophysiological findings with aspects of self-representation; predictive processing-based models; Hohwy's concepts of minimal and narrative self; Clark's notion of the extended mind; and phenomenological perspectives on touch, to postulate a role for self-touch in the pre-reflective sense of mine-ness, or grounding, in transitional states.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lawrence Fischman
- Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, Tufts University, Boston, MA, United States
- Fluence, Woodstock, NY, United States
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