Research

WHAT WE STUDY

Computational Psychiatry & Computational Psychosomatics

Psychiatry faces major challenges: Its nosology is still symptom-based and it lacks mechanistic assays with predictive validity. Strikingly, neuroscientific advances have hardly affected nosology or clinical practice at all. One response to this disconnect is computational psychiatry, which focuses on using computational models to obtain a mechanistic understanding of mental disorders. Our lab’s research in this context specifically centers on developing general mathematical frameworks and addressing clinically-relevant questions in the context of Pathological Gambling Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Psychosomatic Symptoms and Chronic Pain. The aim is to develop new computational assays to improve diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of mental disorders.

One of our current key projects has focussed on the development of a pain management app, SOMA. The first release of the App will be in July 2022. The App includes a platform for scientist to run their own studies. We hope this will facilitate the acquisition of large scale data sets across many institutions. Contact us if you are interested in running a pain study.

Key PubliCATIONS

Petzschner F.H., Weber L.A.E., Gard T., Stephan K.E. Computational Psychosomatics and Computational Psychiatry: Towards a joint framework for differential diagnosis. Biological Psychiatry 82(6):421-430, 2017

Stephan K.E., Manjali Z. M., Mathys C. D., Weber L.A.E., Paliwal S., Gard T., Tittgemeyer M., Fleming S. M., Haker H., Seth A. K., Petzschner F.H. Allostatic Self-Efficacy: A metacognitive theory of dyshomeostasis-induced fatigue and depression. Frontiers in Neuroscience 10:500, 2016

Schneebeli M., Haker H., Rüesch A., Zahnd N., Marino S., Paolini G., Iglesias S., Petzschner F.H.*, Stephan K.E.*, Allostatic Disentangling “Bayesian Brain” theories of Autism Spectrum Disorder. MedRxiv

Interoception

The brain is constantly sensing and evaluating information from within the body and uses this information to form an accurate estimate of the state of our bodies and to regulate body functions accordingly. We study how the brain is processing information from within the body – specifically how it is processing single heartbeats – and how quantitative markers of interoception could be used as biomarkers for mental and physical health.

Key Publications

Petzschner F.H., Critchley H., Tallon-Baudry C., Interoception. Scholarpedia, 2022

Petzschner F.H.*, Garfinkel S.N., Paulus M.P., Koch C., Khalsa S.S. Computational Models of Interoception and Body regulation. Trends in Neurosciences 44(1):63-76, 2021

Petzschner F.H.*, Weber L.*, Wellstein K.V., Paolini G., Tri Do C, Stephan K.E. Focus of attention modulates the heartbeat evoked potential. NeuroImage 186:595-606, 2020

Khalsa S.S., Adolphs R., Cameron O.G., Critchley H.D., Devenport P.W., Feinstein J.S., Feusner J.D., Garfinkel S.N., Lane R.D., Mehling W.E., Meuret A.E. Nemeroff C.B., Oppenheimer S., Petzschner F.H., Pollatos O., Rhudy J.L., Schramm L.P., Simmons W.K., Stein M.B., Stephan K.E., Van Den Bergh O., Van Diest I., von Leupoldt A., Paulus M.P. and the Interoception Summit 2016 participants: Interoception and Mental Health: a Roadmap. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging 3(6): 501-513, 2018

RESOURCES

Task Code: Heartbeat Attention Task

Data: Heartbeat Attention Task

Exteroception

Our five classical senses constantly provide us with noisy information from the outside world. We use this information to construct representations of our environment that inform our decisions and actions. The lab studies how the brain learns and builds these models of its surroundings, and how these processes influence everyday life—from how we perceive time and space to how we develop symptoms.

Key PubliCATIONS

Petzschner F.H., Glasauer S., Stephan K.E. A Bayesian Perspective on Magnitude Estimation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 19(5):285-293, 2015

Petzschner F.H., Glasauer S. Iterative Bayesian estimation as an explanation for regression and range effects – a study on human path integration. Journal of Neuroscience 31(47):17220-9, 2011

RESOURCES

Distance Estimation Task

Decision-Making

Our decision are a window into the computational processes performed by the brain & they can also be a window into consciousness.

Key Publications

Kang Y.*, Petzschner F.H.*, Wolpert D.M., Shadlen M.N. Piercing of consciousness as a threshold-crossing operation. Current Biology 27:2285-2295, 2017

RESOURCES

Data: Random Dots Task for “Piercing of consciousness paper”

Code: for “Piercing of consciousness paper”