Biol Psychiatry
May 25, 2018
Philipp Sterzer, Rick A. Adams, Paul Fletcher et al.
901 citations
Psychosis may stem from altered predictive coding in the brain, where prior beliefs are combined with sensory signals to interpret the world. The canonical account suggests that weakened prior beliefs relative to sensory data lead to maladaptive inferences. However, evidence is mixed: some studies find weakened priors, others stronger priors. Hallucinations and delusions may involve distinct predictive coding alterations. Challenges include non-uniform deficits across sensory modalities, hierarchical processing where lower and higher levels interact non-linearly, and the role of active inference—anticipating how actions affect sensations. Considering these complexities could reconcile conflicting findings and yield a more comprehensive framework for psychosis.
Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science
January 1, 2025
Chris Frith
3 citations
Conscious perception of a stable environment, despite sensory changes during movement, is created by neural computations that account for one's own actions. This perceived stability is experienced as objective—a set of world facts that constrain movement. Because the world is objective, it is expected to constrain others similarly, fostering a shared understanding that enhances social interactions. This shared model of the world constitutes a form of common knowledge inherent in basic conscious perception, even without deliberate sharing. Such common knowledge enables behavioral coordination, which is a critical precursor for the evolution of cooperative behavior.
arXiv Preprint Archive
August 17, 2023
Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, Eric Elmoznino et al.
No current AI systems are conscious, but there are no obvious technical barriers to building ones that might be, according to an analysis grounded in neuroscientific theories of consciousness. The report surveys prominent theories—recurrent processing, global workspace, higher-order, predictive processing, and attention schema—and derives computational indicator properties from them. Applying these indicators to recent AI systems yields no evidence of consciousness, but the authors argue that future systems could potentially implement the necessary properties.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
October 1, 2001
Geraint Rees, Chris Frith
O'Regan and Noë argue that a one-to-one correspondence between awareness and patterns of neural activity in the brain is impossible, making the project of identifying the neural correlates of consciousness doomed to fail. The authors of this response contend that such pessimism may be overstated, as recent empirical data show some convergence in describing consistent patterns of neural activity associated with visual consciousness.