Computational psychiatry promises a fresh and formal approach to mental health, and
autism has become its so-called poster child. Key concepts from computational neuroscience
are now finding their way into discussions about the pathophysiology and psychopathology
of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (
1
,
2
,
3
,
4
). This is exemplified beautifully by Sevgi et al. (
5
), who report that “higher autistic traits in healthy subjects are related to lower
scores in a learning task that requires social cue integration.” Careful Bayesian
modeling of this learning suggests that trait-related differences are not explained
by a failure to process social stimuli per se, but rather by the extent to which participants
afford precision to—or attend—social cues. So why is it important? For people unfamiliar
with things like the Bayesian brain and precision, we start with a brief review of
the ideas that motivated Sevgi et al. (
5
).To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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References
- When the world becomes too real: a Bayesian explanation of autistic perception.Trends Cogn Sci. 2012; 16: 504-510
- Precise minds in uncertain worlds: predictive coding in autism.Psychol Rev. 2014; 121: 649-675
- An aberrant precision account of autism.Front Hum Neurosci. 2014; 8: 302
- The felt presence of other minds: Predictive processing, counterfactual predictions, and mentalising in autism.Conscious Cogn. 2015; 36: 376-389
- Social Bayes: Using Bayesian modeling to study autistic trait–related differences in social cognition.Biol Psychiatry. 2016; 80: 112-119
- The weak coherence account: detail focused cognitive style in autism spectrum disorders.J Autism Dev Disord. 2006; 36: 5-25
- Autism, oxytocin and interoception.Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2014; 47: 410-430
- Commentary on “Autism, oxytocin and interoception”: Alexithymia, not autism spectrum disorders, is the consequence of interoceptive failure.Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2015; 56: 348-353
- The over-pruning hypothesis of autism.Dev Sci. 2016; 19: 284-305
- Low endogenous neural noise in autism.Autism. 2015; 19: 351-362
Article info
Publication history
Accepted:
May 10,
2016
Received:
May 10,
2016
Identification
Copyright
© 2016 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Society of Biological Psychiatry All rights reserved.
