Innovations in the psychopathology of schizophrenia: a primer for busy clinicians

SUMMARY Significant developments in schizophrenia psychopathology are ready to be incorporated into clinical practice. These advances allow a way forward through the well-described challenges experienced with current diagnostic and psychopathological frameworks. This article discusses approaches that will enable clinicians to access a wider and richer spectrum of patient experience; describes process-based models of schizophrenia in the domains of both the brain and the mind; and considers how different levels of analysis might be linked via the predictive processing framework. Multiple levels of analysis provide different targets for varying modalities of treatment – dopamine blockade at the molecular level, psychological therapy at the level of the mind, and social interventions at the personal level. Psychiatry needs to align itself closer to neuroscientific research. It should move from a symptom-based understanding to a model based on process. That is – after having asked about a patient's symptoms and experience clinicians need to introduce steps involving a consideration of what might be the brain and mind processes underlying the experience.

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Are basic actors brainbound agents? Narrowing down solutions to the problem of probabilistic content for predictive perceivers

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences ◽

10.1007/s11097-021-09736-z ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

George Britten-Neish

Keyword(s):

Perceptual Experience ◽

Extended Mind ◽

Predictive Processing ◽

Conditional Probability Density ◽

Single Action ◽

Density Distributions ◽

Consciousness Studies ◽

Personal Level ◽

Probability Density Distributions ◽

The Mind

AbstractClark (Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25(3–4), 71–87, 2018) worries that predictive processing (PP) accounts of perception introduce a puzzling disconnect between the content of personal-level perceptual states and their underlying subpersonal representations. According to PP, in perception, the brain encodes information about the environment in conditional probability density distributions over causes of sensory input. But it seems perceptual experience only presents us with one way the world is at a time. If perception is at bottom probabilistic, shouldn’t this aspect of subpersonally represented content show up in consciousness? To address this worry, Clark argues that representations underlying personal-level content are constrained by the need to provide a single action-guiding take on the environment. However, this proposal rests a conception of the nature of agency, famously articulated by Davidson (1980a, b), that is inconsistent with a view of the mind as embodied-extended. Since Clark and other enactivist PP theorists present the extended mind as an important consequence of the predictive framework, the proposal is in tension with his complete view. I claim that this inconsistency could be resolved either by retaining the Davidsonian view of action and abandoning the extended-embodied approach, or by adopting a more processual, world-involving account of agency and perceptual experience than Clark currently endorses. To solve the puzzle he raises, Clark must become a radical enactivist or a consistent internalist.

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Neuroimaging of typical and atypical development: A perspective from multiple levels of analysis

Development and Psychopathology ◽

10.1017/s0954579402003073 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 14 (3) ◽

pp. 521-536 ◽

Cited By ~ 105

Author(s):

MARK H. JOHNSON ◽

HANIFE HALIT ◽

SARAH J. GRICE ◽

ANNETTE KARMILOFF–SMITH

Keyword(s):

Temporal Dynamics ◽

Functional Neuroimaging ◽

Levels Of Analysis ◽

Alternative View ◽

Neural Processing ◽

Typically Developing ◽

Postnatal Maturation ◽

Multiple Levels ◽

Atypical Development ◽

The Brain

To date, research involving functional neuroimaging of typical and atypical development has depended on several assumptions about the postnatal maturation of the brain. We consider evidence from multiple levels of analysis that brings into question these underlying assumptions and advance an alternative view. This alternative view, based on an “interactive specialization” approach to postnatal brain development, indicates that there is a need to: obtain data from early in development; focus more on differences in interregional interactions rather than searching for localized, discrete lesions; examine the temporal dynamics of neural processing; and move away from deficits to image tasks in which atypical participants perform as well as typically developing participants.

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Why evolutionary psychology should abandon modularity

10.31234/osf.io/7syvr ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

David Pietraszewski ◽

Annie E. Wertz

Keyword(s):

Evolutionary Psychology ◽

Levels Of Analysis ◽

Preventative Measures ◽

The Future ◽

Massive Modularity ◽

Ill Posed ◽

The Mind ◽

Different Levels ◽

Level Of Analysis

A debate surrounding modularity—the notion that the mind may be exclusively composed of distinct systems or modules—has held philosophers and psychologists captive for nearly forty years. Concern about this thesis—which has come to be known as the massive modularity debate—serves as the primary grounds for skepticism of evolutionary psychology’s claims about the mind. Here we will suggest that the entirety of this debate, and the very notion of massive modularity itself, is ill-posed and confused. In particular, it is based on a confusion about the level of analysis (or reduction) at which one is approaching the mind. Here, we will provide a framework for clarifying at what level of analysis one is approaching the mind, and explain how a systemic failure to distinguish between different levels of analysis has led to profound misunderstandings of not only evolutionary psychology, but also of the entire cognitivist enterprise of approaching the mind at the level of mechanism. We will furthermore suggest that confusions between different levels of analysis are endemic throughout the psychological sciences—extending well beyond issues of modularity and evolutionary psychology. Therefore, researchers in all areas should take preventative measures to avoid this confusion in the future.

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Mind Causality: A Computational Neuroscience Approach

Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fncom.2021.706505 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 15 ◽

Author(s):

Edmund T. Rolls

Keyword(s):

Computational Neuroscience ◽

Quantum Physics ◽

Causal Account ◽

Levels Of Explanation ◽

Brain Level ◽

High Level ◽

The Mind ◽

Mental Events ◽

The Brain ◽

Different Levels

A neuroscience-based approach has recently been proposed for the relation between the mind and the brain. The proposal is that events at the sub-neuronal, neuronal, and neuronal network levels take place simultaneously to perform a computation that can be described at a high level as a mental state, with content about the world. It is argued that as the processes at the different levels of explanation take place at the same time, they are linked by a non-causal supervenient relationship: causality can best be described in brains as operating within but not between levels. This mind-brain theory allows mental events to be different in kind from the mechanistic events that underlie them; but does not lead one to argue that mental events cause brain events, or vice versa: they are different levels of explanation of the operation of the computational system. Here, some implications are developed. It is proposed that causality, at least as it applies to the brain, should satisfy three conditions. First, interventionist tests for causality must be satisfied. Second, the causally related events should be at the same level of explanation. Third, a temporal order condition must be satisfied, with a suitable time scale in the order of 10 ms (to exclude application to quantum physics; and a cause cannot follow an effect). Next, although it may be useful for different purposes to describe causality involving the mind and brain at the mental level, or at the brain level, it is argued that the brain level may sometimes be more accurate, for sometimes causal accounts at the mental level may arise from confabulation by the mentalee, whereas understanding exactly what computations have occurred in the brain that result in a choice or action will provide the correct causal account for why a choice or action was made. Next, it is argued that possible cases of “downward causation” can be accounted for by a within-levels-of-explanation account of causality. This computational neuroscience approach provides an opportunity to proceed beyond Cartesian dualism and physical reductionism in considering the relations between the mind and the brain.

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From mental representations to neural codes: A multilevel approach

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x19001390 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 42 ◽

Author(s):

Jon Gauthier ◽

João Loula ◽

Eli Pollock ◽

Tyler Brooke Wilson ◽

Catherine Wong

Keyword(s):

Neural Activity ◽

Mental Representations ◽

Neural Code ◽

Levels Of Analysis ◽

Behavioral Patterns ◽

Multilevel Approach ◽

Intelligent Behavior ◽

Multiple Levels ◽

The Mind ◽

Integrated Program

Abstract Representation and computation are the best tools we have for explaining intelligent behavior. In our program, we explore the space of representations present in the mind by constraining them to explain data at multiple levels of analysis, from behavioral patterns to neural activity. We argue that this integrated program assuages Brette's worries about the study of the neural code.

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Why Evolutionary Psychology Should Abandon Modularity

Perspectives on Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/1745691621997113 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 174569162199711

Author(s):

David Pietraszewski ◽

Annie E. Wertz

Keyword(s):

Evolutionary Psychology ◽

Preventive Measures ◽

Levels Of Analysis ◽

The Future ◽

Massive Modularity ◽

Ill Posed ◽

The Mind ◽

Different Levels ◽

Level Of Analysis

A debate surrounding modularity—the notion that the mind may be exclusively composed of distinct systems or modules—has held philosophers and psychologists captive for nearly 40 years. Concern about this thesis—which has come to be known as the massive modularity debate—serves as the primary grounds for skepticism of evolutionary psychology’s claims about the mind. In this article we argue that the entirety of this debate, and the very notion of massive modularity itself, is ill-posed and confused. In particular, it is based on a confusion about the level of analysis (or reduction) at which one is approaching the mind. Here we provide a framework for clarifying at what level of analysis one is approaching the mind and explain how a systemic failure to distinguish between different levels of analysis has led to profound misunderstandings of not only evolutionary psychology but also of the entire cognitivist enterprise of approaching the mind at the level of the mechanism. We furthermore suggest that confusions between different levels of analysis are endemic throughout the psychological sciences—extending well beyond issues of modularity and evolutionary psychology. Therefore, researchers in all areas should take preventive measures to avoid this confusion in the future.

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Psychiatry and Neuroscience

The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry ◽

10.1177/070674370905400803 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 54 (8) ◽

pp. 513-517 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Joel Paris

Keyword(s):

Mental Disorders ◽

Neuronal Activity ◽

Psychiatric Symptoms ◽

Common Mental Disorders ◽

Relevant Literature ◽

Emergent Phenomena ◽

Neuroscience Research ◽

Multiple Levels ◽

The Mind ◽

The Brain

Objective: To examine the extent to which neuroscience accounts for mental disorders. Method: Relevant literature on this problem was selectively reviewed. Results: Thus far, neuroscience research has contributed more to the understanding of the brain than to determining the causes of mental disorders. Its model is more appropriate to severe than to common mental disorders. A reductionistic approach cannot account for emergent phenomena occurring at the level of the mind. Conclusions: Mental disorders cannot be reduced to abnormalities in neuronal activity; psychiatric symptoms need to be understood at multiple levels.

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A Neuroscience Levels of Explanation Approach to the Mind and the Brain

Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fncom.2021.649679 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 15 ◽

Author(s):

Edmund T. Rolls

Keyword(s):

Mental States ◽

Levels Of Explanation ◽

Processing Level ◽

Reductive Physicalism ◽

Brain States ◽

High Level ◽

The Mind ◽

Mental Events ◽

The Brain ◽

Different Levels

The relation between mental states and brain states is important in computational neuroscience, and in psychiatry in which interventions with medication are made on brain states to alter mental states. The relation between the brain and the mind has puzzled philosophers for centuries. Here a neuroscience approach is proposed in which events at the sub-neuronal, neuronal, and neuronal network levels take place simultaneously to perform a computation that can be described at a high level as a mental state, with content about the world. It is argued that as the processes at the different levels of explanation take place at the same time, they are linked by a non-causal supervenient relationship: causality can best be described in brains as operating within but not between levels. This allows the supervenient (e.g., mental) properties to be emergent, though once understood at the mechanistic levels they may seem less emergent, and expected. This mind-brain theory allows mental events to be different in kind from the mechanistic events that underlie them; but does not lead one to argue that mental events cause brain events, or vice versa: they are different levels of explanation of the operation of the computational system. This approach may provide a way of thinking about brains and minds that is different from dualism and from reductive physicalism, and which is rooted in the computational processes that are fundamental to understanding brain and mental events, and that mean that the mental and mechanistic levels are linked by the computational process being performed. Explanations at the different levels of operation may be useful in different ways. For example, if we wish to understand how arithmetic is performed in the brain, description at the mental level of the algorithm being computed will be useful. But if the brain operates to result in mental disorders, then understanding the mechanism at the neural processing level may be more useful, in for example, the treatment of psychiatric disorders.

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