Psychotic Experiences and Overhasty Inferences Are Related to Maladaptive Learning

Theoretical accounts suggest that an alteration in the brain's learning mechanisms might lead to overhasty inferences, resulting in psychotic symptoms. Here, we sought to elucidate the suggested link between maladaptive learning and psychosis. Ninety-eight healthy individuals with varying degre...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLoS computational biology 2017-01, Vol.13 (1), p.e1005328-e1005328
Main Authors: Stuke, Heiner, Stuke, Hannes, Weilnhammer, Veith Andreas, Schmack, Katharina
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Biology and Life Sciences
Brain research
Cognition & reasoning
Computational Biology
Earth Sciences
Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Female
Funding
Hallucinations
Hallucinations - physiopathology
Health aspects
Humans
Hypotheses
Inference
Learning - physiology
Male
Medicine and Health Sciences
Models, Psychological
Psychiatry
Psychological aspects
Psychosis
Psychotherapy
Psychotic disorders
Psychotic Disorders - physiopathology
Risk factors
Social Sciences
Studies
Young Adult
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Summary:Theoretical accounts suggest that an alteration in the brain's learning mechanisms might lead to overhasty inferences, resulting in psychotic symptoms. Here, we sought to elucidate the suggested link between maladaptive learning and psychosis. Ninety-eight healthy individuals with varying degrees of delusional ideation and hallucinatory experiences performed a probabilistic reasoning task that allowed us to quantify overhasty inferences. Replicating previous results, we found a relationship between psychotic experiences and overhasty inferences during probabilistic reasoning. Computational modelling revealed that the behavioral data was best explained by a novel computational learning model that formalizes the adaptiveness of learning by a non-linear distortion of prediction error processing, where an increased non-linearity implies a growing resilience against learning from surprising and thus unreliable information (large prediction errors). Most importantly, a decreased adaptiveness of learning predicted delusional ideation and hallucinatory experiences. Our current findings provide a formal description of the computational mechanisms underlying overhasty inferences, thereby empirically substantiating theories that link psychosis to maladaptive learning.
ISSN:1553-7358
1553-734X
1553-7358
DOI:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005328