Psychology 348: Special Topic Seminar: Mental Illness and the Predictive Brain

Predictive coding models in neuroscience address how our beliefs interact with data coming to us from the outside world. Are we quick to change what we believe in response to new evidence or do our beliefs take on a life of their own without much regard for sensory information? In this course, we will investigate mental illness from the perspective of predictive coding, asking what we might better understand about hallucinations, delusions, anhedonia, and obsessive thinking using this model of brain function. Students will investigate the current neuroscientific literature to examine other psychiatric constructs and dimensions through the lens of predictive coding and then share their findings and conclusions.