Delusions and prediction error: clarifying the roles of behavioural and brain responses

Abstract

Griffiths and colleagues provided a clear and thoughtful review of the prediction error model of delusion formation [Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 2014 April 4 (Epub ahead of print)]. As well as reviewing the central ideas and concluding that the existing evidence base is broadly supportive of the model, they provide a detailed critique of some of the experiments that we have performed to study it. Though they conclude that the shortcomings that they identify in these experiments do not fundamentally challenge the prediction error model, we nevertheless respond to these criticisms. We begin by providing a more detailed outline of the model itself as there are certain important aspects of it that were not covered in their review. We then respond to their specific criticisms of the empirical evidence. We defend the neuroimaging contrasts that we used to explore this model of psychosis arguing that, while any single contrast entails some ambiguity, our assumptions have been justified by our extensive background work before and since.

Keywords: cognitive neuroscience; delusions; functional neuroimaging; prediction error.

Figure 1.. Relating behavioural predictions to delusion-like ideas.

Note: Scatterplot depicting the relationship between subjects' behavioural predictions about the blocked cue and their self-reported magical ideation measured with the Chapman scale (Eckblad & Chapman, 1983).