Which factors determine what we believe about our world, ourselves, our past, and our future? Cognitive neuroscience suggests that our beliefs are dependent on brain activity, specifically on the way our brains process sensory information in order to make sense of our environment.
These beliefs (defined as probability estimates) are central to our brain’s predictive processing function, which enables it to predict the probabilistic structure of the world around us. These predictions could even be the fundamental building blocks of mental states, such as perceptions and emotions.
Many psychiatric disorders, such as depression and schizophrenia, are characterised by irregular beliefs whose origins we still don’t fully understand. But if we can identify the cerebral systems governing them, we could target those very areas in a bid to alleviate the pain associated to these illnesses. [Read more…] about Study identifies cognitive benefits of ketamine in patients with treatment-resistant depression
