Events
International Lecture Series
October 30th, 2024, 4:15-5:45 pm: Sören Krach on "Affected beliefs: Neurocomputational mechanisms and clinical implications"
Abstract:
Self-beliefs, such as beliefs about our abilities, attractiveness, or personality, are under constant (re)evaluation depending on the feedback and information we receive from our surrounding world (Sharot et al., 2011). However, feedback processing is not a passive process during which information is picked up in an objective manner, rather the idea prevails that belief formation is essentially biased and shaped by affective and motivational processes. In several studies, using the Learning-of-own-performance task (Müller-Pinzler et al., 2019, 2022), we approach the question of how humans arrive at these self-beliefs in the first place (study 1; Müller-Pinzler et al., 2019; Krach et al., 2024) and, once established, how these self-beliefs are revised in the face of conflicting evidence (study 2; Schröder et al., 2024). Using computational modeling, functional neuroimaging and psychophysiological data, we show that the formation of self-beliefs is biased towards negative information and this bias is associated with the experience of affective states during belief formation. The results further suggest that individuals who update their beliefs more negatively, and experience stronger negative affect, process negative information more intensely than positive information as indicated by increased pupil dilation and neural activation within the insula and amygdala (study 3; Müller-Pinzler et al., 2022). Finally, in a clinical sample of persons diagnosed with major depression and healthy controls, we replicate the negativity bias by showing that both groups have similar patterns of negatively biased belief formation. Further, in the insula negatively biased updating was accompanied by stronger tracking of negative, but not positive, prediction errors with increasing symptom severity (study 4; Czekalla et al., 2024). Our findings provide support from healthy and clinical samples for the overall rationale of the formation of affected beliefs, that is, the notion that beliefs depend on global priors and are fundamentally shaped by motivational biases as well as affective experiences during feedback processing.
This lecture will take place in Hamburg, Von-Melle-Park 11, Lecture Hall. This lecture will likely be streamed. Please contact us, if you would like the link.
Please e-mail to klinische.psych"AT"uni-hamburg.de for all requests related to the lecture series.