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Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals
According to the predictive coding theory of psychosis, hallucinations and delusions are explained by an overweighing of high-level prior expectations relative to sensory information that leads to false perceptions of meaningful signals. However, it is currently unclear whether the hypothesized over...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8061414/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33897518 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.583637 |
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author | Stuke, Heiner Kress, Elisabeth Weilnhammer, Veith Andreas Sterzer, Philipp Schmack, Katharina |
author_facet | Stuke, Heiner Kress, Elisabeth Weilnhammer, Veith Andreas Sterzer, Philipp Schmack, Katharina |
author_sort | Stuke, Heiner |
collection | PubMed |
description | According to the predictive coding theory of psychosis, hallucinations and delusions are explained by an overweighing of high-level prior expectations relative to sensory information that leads to false perceptions of meaningful signals. However, it is currently unclear whether the hypothesized overweighing of priors (1) represents a pervasive alteration that extends to the visual modality and (2) takes already effect at early automatic processing stages. Here, we addressed these questions by studying visual perception of socially meaningful stimuli in healthy individuals with varying degrees of psychosis proneness (n = 39). In a first task, we quantified participants’ prior for detecting faces in visual noise using a Bayesian decision model. In a second task, we measured participants’ prior for detecting direct gaze stimuli that were rendered invisible by continuous flash suppression. We found that the prior for detecting faces in noise correlated with hallucination proneness (r = 0.50, p = 0.001, Bayes factor 1/20.1) as well as delusion proneness (r = 0.46, p = 0.003, BF 1/9.4). The prior for detecting invisible direct gaze was significantly associated with hallucination proneness (r = 0.43, p = 0.009, BF 1/3.8) but not conclusively with delusion proneness (r = 0.30, p = 0.079, BF 1.7). Our results provide evidence for the idea that overly strong high-level priors for automatically detecting socially meaningful stimuli might constitute a processing alteration in psychosis. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8061414 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-80614142021-04-23 Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals Stuke, Heiner Kress, Elisabeth Weilnhammer, Veith Andreas Sterzer, Philipp Schmack, Katharina Front Psychol Psychology According to the predictive coding theory of psychosis, hallucinations and delusions are explained by an overweighing of high-level prior expectations relative to sensory information that leads to false perceptions of meaningful signals. However, it is currently unclear whether the hypothesized overweighing of priors (1) represents a pervasive alteration that extends to the visual modality and (2) takes already effect at early automatic processing stages. Here, we addressed these questions by studying visual perception of socially meaningful stimuli in healthy individuals with varying degrees of psychosis proneness (n = 39). In a first task, we quantified participants’ prior for detecting faces in visual noise using a Bayesian decision model. In a second task, we measured participants’ prior for detecting direct gaze stimuli that were rendered invisible by continuous flash suppression. We found that the prior for detecting faces in noise correlated with hallucination proneness (r = 0.50, p = 0.001, Bayes factor 1/20.1) as well as delusion proneness (r = 0.46, p = 0.003, BF 1/9.4). The prior for detecting invisible direct gaze was significantly associated with hallucination proneness (r = 0.43, p = 0.009, BF 1/3.8) but not conclusively with delusion proneness (r = 0.30, p = 0.079, BF 1.7). Our results provide evidence for the idea that overly strong high-level priors for automatically detecting socially meaningful stimuli might constitute a processing alteration in psychosis. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-04-08 /pmc/articles/PMC8061414/ /pubmed/33897518 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.583637 Text en Copyright © 2021 Stuke, Kress, Weilnhammer, Sterzer and Schmack. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Stuke, Heiner Kress, Elisabeth Weilnhammer, Veith Andreas Sterzer, Philipp Schmack, Katharina Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals |
title | Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals |
title_full | Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals |
title_fullStr | Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals |
title_full_unstemmed | Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals |
title_short | Overly Strong Priors for Socially Meaningful Visual Signals Are Linked to Psychosis Proneness in Healthy Individuals |
title_sort | overly strong priors for socially meaningful visual signals are linked to psychosis proneness in healthy individuals |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8061414/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33897518 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.583637 |
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