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SUMMARY:Perception and belief in psychosis - Professor Paul Fletcher\, Dep
 artment of Psychiatry
DTSTART:20141027T180000Z
DTEND:20141027T190000Z
UID:TALK51927@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Beverley Larner
DESCRIPTION:Psychosis can be one of the most distressing and bewildering f
 eatures of mental illness.  It comprises altered states of belief and perc
 eption\, referred to as Delusions and Hallucinations respectively. The exi
 stence of such phenomena poses a very difficult challenge to our understan
 ding. What sorts of psychological disturbance may lead to an individual cr
 eating\, and becoming entirely immersed in\, a world for which there appea
 rs to be very little supportive evidence and much that is contradictory?\n
 \nI will consider this question in the setting of the challenges faced by 
 the human brain in dealing with a world that is complex\, unreliable\, noi
 sy and ambiguous. I suggest that\, in order to make any sense of this worl
 d\, the brain must form hypotheses about what sorts of causes in the outsi
 de world might give rise to its sensory input. In doing so\, it uses expec
 tations to resolve ambiguity.\n\nSimply put\, expectation shapes experienc
 e: even under normal circumstances we are active in creating our experienc
 es. From this perspective\, the characteristic phenomena of psychosis are 
 not that far-removed from normal processing and may reflect a subtle alter
 ation in balance between prior expectation and current experience.\n
LOCATION:Bristol-Myers-Squibb Lecture theatre\, Department of Chemistry
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