Coordination Funds

协调基金

• 批准号: 523339857
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Tania Lincoln
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Arbeitsbereich Klinische Psychologie und Psychotherapie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Units
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/523339857?language=en
• 关键词: Coordination; Funds

Being able to extract regularities from noisy input, recognize when they change and update beliefs accordingly is crucial to mental health. Optimal learning in volatile environments requires dynamic up- and down-regulation of the learning rate depending both on the stochasticity within a state and on the probability of a state change having occurred. If the updating process goes awry this will result in biased internal representations of the state of the world that eventually give rise to maladaptive behaviour. In mental disorders, biased internal representations become apparent when patients either hold on to beliefs about themselves, others or the world that no longer match the observable experiences or fail to form sufficiently stable representations of their environment. However, the assumption that psychopathology could arise from difficulties in dynamic belief updating (DynBU) has not been systematically tested. Also, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying DynBU are only just beginning to be unravelled. We assume that fundamental changes in the environmental state trigger a cascade of higher-level surprise, boosts of arousal and a cortical network reset. Identifying aberrancies of this cascade that affect the learning rate will inform our understanding of the origins of aberrant belief updating. We also assume that the ability to learn from new outcome contingencies will vary throughout ontogeny and in response to environmental input. Being able to pinpoint clinically relevant contextual influences on DynBU will provide a better understanding of basic adaptive processes and will help to understand the development of emerging psychopathology. In nine innovative projects, this Research Unit aims to 1) unravel underlying neurocognitive mechanisms of DynBU in volatile environments, 2) identify clinically relevant developmental and environmental contextual influences on DynBU, and 3) use this knowledge to specify problems in DynBU related to psychopathology. To enable direct cross-project comparisons, every project will use a common change-point task, employ a shared clinical assessment and take a behavioural, computational, and neuroscientific approach. Data will be integrated by advanced computational modelling via shared data-analysis. To realize the ambitious aims, the interdisciplinary and internationally oriented Research Unit includes thirteen established researchers and a Mercator fellow with the required expertise in behavioural modelling, development, learning mechanisms, neural processes, and psychopathology. The fundamental insight into mechanisms that underlie DynBU and the developmental and environmental contexts that shape it, will significantly advance our understanding of how people learn and adapt. This will enable us to identify aberrancies that give rise to psychopathology and it can open up new avenues for mechanism-based and developmentally informed intervention built on a new understanding of uncertainty processing.

能够从嘈杂的输入中提取规则，识别它们何时改变，并相应地更新信念，这对心理健康至关重要。在易变环境中的最佳学习需要根据状态内的随机性和发生状态变化的概率来动态地上调和下调学习率。如果更新过程出错，这将导致对世界状态的内部表述存在偏见，最终导致不适应行为。在精神障碍中，当患者要么坚持对自己、他人或世界的信念，而这些信念不再与可观察到的经验相匹配，要么无法对其环境形成足够稳定的表征，那么有偏见的内部表征就会变得明显。然而，关于精神病理学可能源于动态信念更新困难的假设尚未得到系统检验。此外，DyBU背后的神经认知机制才刚刚开始解开。我们假设，环境状态的根本性变化会引发一系列更高级别的惊讶、唤醒和大脑皮层网络的重置。识别这种影响学习速度的级联异常，将有助于我们理解异常信念更新的起源。我们还假设，从新的或有结果中学习的能力在个体发育过程中和对环境投入的反应中将有所不同。能够准确地找出与临床相关的上下文对DyBU的影响将有助于更好地理解基本的适应过程，并将有助于理解新兴精神病理学的发展。在九个创新项目中，这个研究单位的目标是：1)揭示动荡环境中动态BU潜在的神经认知机制；2)确定临床上相关的发育和环境背景对动态BU的影响；以及3)利用这些知识来明确与精神病理学相关的动态BU问题。为了实现直接的跨项目比较，每个项目将使用共同的变点任务，采用共享的临床评估，并采取行为、计算和神经科学方法。数据将通过共享数据分析通过高级计算模型进行整合。为了实现雄心勃勃的目标，面向国际的跨学科研究股包括13名资深研究人员和1名墨卡托研究员，他们在行为建模、发展、学习机制、神经过程和精神病理学方面具有必要的专业知识。对DyBU背后的机制以及塑造它的发展和环境背景的基本洞察，将极大地促进我们对人们如何学习和适应的理解。这将使我们能够识别引起精神病理学的异常，并为建立在对不确定性处理的新理解基础上的基于机制的和发展知情的干预开辟新的途径。