Perception and prediction in psychosis: Preliminary OPM-MEG findings from the ‘PRIOR’ study

Speaker: Dr Elise Rowe (UoM)

Date: Thursday 16 July 1pm – 2pm AEST
Zoom: Click here to join the seminar

Abstract:
Psychotic disorders are severe mental health conditions that are marked by disruptions to perception and disconnection from reality. While neurotypical individuals integrate sensory information (likelihood) and prior expectations when forming perceptions – it is theorised that individuals with psychosis show alterations to these processes, however, the underlying neurobiological mechanisms are still poorly understood. To address this, our ‘PRIOR’ study examines perceptual processing across the psychosis spectrum using advances in neuroimaging including optically-pumped magnetoencephalography (OPM-MEG) and ultra high-resolution layer fMRI at 7T. We aim to recruit four groups of N=30: individuals at-risk of developing psychosis (UHR), those who have experienced a first episode of psychosis (FEP), people with chronic psychotic illness within the schizophrenia spectrum (SZ) and neurotypical individuals (NT). Each participant completes:
(1) a behavioural ‘coin-task’ examining how prior and likelihood information are combined,
(2) the ‘hollow mask illusion’ during layer fMRI examining the neural encoding of prior expectations in deep cortical layers and
(3) an auditory ‘volatility mismatch negativity’ paradigm during OP-MEG recordings examining whether (prior) expectation violations manifest as brain connectivity alterations.

In this talk, I will discuss the preliminary findings from our OPM-MEG auditory mismatch negativity paradigm after our first year of recruitment.

Bio:
Dr Elise Rowe is a Research Fellow within the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on perception, predictive coding, conscious awareness, and mental health. She is currently using advanced neuroimaging techniques, including OPM-MEG and layer fMRI, to investigate the neurobiological mechanisms underlying perceptual changes in psychosis. Her previous work has employed EEG, fMRI, and diffusion MRI to study the pathways involved visual processes such as motion perception and spatial attention. Overall, her research aims to better understand the neural pathways involved in generating our perception of the world.