Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Computational Psychiatry

  • Living reference work entry
  • Latest version View entry history
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience

Definition

Computational psychiatry is a heterogeneous field at the intersection of computational neuroscience and psychiatry. Incorporating methods from psychiatry, psychology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, and machine learning, computational psychiatry focuses on building mathematical models of neural or cognitive phenomena relevant to psychiatric diseases. The models span a wide range – from biologically detailed models of neurons or networks to abstract models describing high-level cognitive abilities of an organism. Psychiatric diseases are conceptualized either as an extreme of normal function or as a consequence of alterations in parts of the model.

As in computational neuroscience more generally, the building of models forces key concepts to be made concrete and hidden assumptions to be made explicit. One critical function of these models in the setting of psychiatry is their ability to bridge between low-level biological and high-level cognitive features. While many...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Belin D, Everitt BJ (2008) Cocaine seeking habits depend upon dopamine-dependent serial connectivity linking the ventral with the dorsal striatum. Neuron 57(3):432–441

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Boureau YL, Dayan P (2011) Opponency revisited: competition and cooperation between dopamine and serotonin. Neuropsychopharmacology 36(1):74–97

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Braver TS, Barch DM, Cohen JD (1999) Cognition and control in schizophrenia: a computational model of dopamine and prefrontal function. Biol Psychiatry 46(3):312–328

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bylsma LM, Morris BH, Rottenberg J (2008) A meta-analysis of emotional reactivity in major depressive disorder. Clin Psychol Rev 28(4):676–691

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Camerer CF (2003) Behavioral game theory: experiments in strategic interaction. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Chase HW, Frank MJ, Michael A, Bullmore ET, Sahakian BJ, Robbins TW (2010a) Approach and avoidance learning in patients with major depression and healthy controls: relation to anhedonia. Psychol Med 40(3):433–440

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chase HW, Michael A, Bullmore ET, Sahakian BJ, Robbins TW (2010b) Paradoxical enhancement of choice reaction time performance in patients with major depression. J Psychopharmacol 24(4):471–479

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chiu PH, Kayali MA, Kishida KT, Tomlin D, Klinger LG, Klinger MR, Montague PR (2008) Self responses along cingulate cortex reveal quantitative neural phenotype for high-functioning autism. Neuron 57(3):463–473

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chowdhury R, Guitart-Masip M, Lambert C, Dayan P, Huys QJM, Düzel E, Dolan RJ (2013) Dopamine restores reward prediction errors in older age. Nat Neurosci 16:648–653

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen JD, Braver TS, O’Reilly RC (1996) A computational approach to prefrontal cortex, cognitive control and schizophrenia: recent developments and current challenges. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 351(1346):1515–1527

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Corlett PR, Murray GK, Honey GD, Aitken MRF, Shanks DR, Robbins TW, Bullmore ET, Dickinson A, Fletcher PC (2007) Disrupted prediction-error signal in psychosis: evidence for an associative account of delusions. Brain 130(Pt 9):2387–2400

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Costello CG (1972) Depression: loss of reinforcers or loss of reinforcer effectiveness? Behav Ther 3:240–247

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daw ND, Niv Y, Dayan P (2005) Uncertainty-based competition between prefrontal and dorsolateral striatal systems for behavioral control. Nat Neurosci 8(12):1704–1711

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dayan P (2009) Dopamine, reinforcement learning, and addiction. Pharmacopsychiatry 42(Suppl 1):S56–S65

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dayan P (2012) Instrumental vigour in punishment and reward. Eur J Neurosci 35(7):1152–1168

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dayan P, Huys QJM (2008) Serotonin, inhibition, and negative mood. PLoS Comput Biol 4(2):e4

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dayan P, Huys QJM (2009) Serotonin in affective control. Annu Rev Neurosci 32:95–126

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Dickinson A, Smith J, Mirenowicz J (2000) Dissociation of Pavlovian and instrumental incentive learning under dopamine antagonists. Behav Neurosci 114(3):468–483

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Egerton A, Chaddock CA, Winton-Brown TT, Bloomfield MAP, Bhattacharyya S, Allen P, McGuire PK, Howes OD (2013) Presynaptic striatal dopamine dysfunction in people at ultra-high risk for psychosis: findings in a second cohort. Biol Psychiatry 74(2):106–112

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Everitt BJ, Robbins TW (2005) Neural systems of reinforcement for drug addiction: from actions to habits to compulsion. Nat Neurosci 8(11):1481–1489

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fletcher PC, Frith CD (2009) Perceiving is believing: a Bayesian approach to explaining the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Nat Rev Neurosci 10(1):48–58

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ford JM, Roach BJ, Faustman WO, Mathalon DH (2007) Synch before you speak: auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia. Am J Psychiatry 164(3):458–466

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Frank MJ (2005) Dynamic dopamine modulation in the basal ganglia: a neurocomputational account of cognitive deficits in medicated and nonmedicated Parkinsonism. J Cogn Neurosci 17(1):51–72

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Frank MJ, Moustafa AA, Haughey HM, Curran T, Hutchison KE (2007) Genetic triple dissociation reveals multiple roles for dopamine in reinforcement learning. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 104(41):16311–16316

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Friston K (2008) Hierarchical models in the brain. PLoS Comput Biol 4(11):e1000211

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Friston KJ, Frith CD (1995) Schizophrenia: a disconnection syndrome? Clin Neurosci 3(2):89–97

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Garety PA, Freeman D, Jolley S, Dunn G, Bebbington PE, Fowler DG, Kuipers E, Dudley R (2005) Reasoning, emotions, and delusional conviction in psychosis. J Abnorm Psychol 114(3):373–384

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gelder M, Harrison P, Cowen P (2006) Shorter Oxford textbook of psychiatry. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Gradin VB, Kumar P, Waiter G, Ahearn T, Stickle C, Milders M, Reid I, Hall J, Steele JD (2011) Expected value and prediction error abnormalities in depression and schizophrenia. Brain 134(Pt 6):1751–1764

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gray J, Feldon J, Rawlins J, Hemsley D, Smith A (1991) The neuropsychology of schizophrenia. Behav Brain Sci 14(01):1–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grossberg S, Pepe J (1970) Schizophrenia: possible dependence of associational span, bowing, and primacy vs. recency on spiking threshold. Behav Sci 15(4):359–362

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Guitart-Masip M, Huys QJM, Fuentemilla L, Dayan P, Duzel E, Dolan RJ (2012) Go and no-go learning in reward and punishment: interactions between affect and effect. Neuroimage 62(1):154–166

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hasler G (2012) Can the neuroeconomics revolution revolutionize psychiatry? Neurosci Biobehav Rev 36(1):64–78

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Heinz A (2002) Dopaminergic dysfunction in alcoholism and schizophrenia-psychopathological and behavioral correlates. Eur Psychiatry 17(1):9–16

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Henriques JB, Glowacki JM, Davidson RJ (1994) Reward fails to alter response bias in depression. J Abnorm Psychol 103(3):460–466

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hoffman RE (1987) Computer simulations of neural information processing and the schizophrenia-mania dichotomy. Arch Gen Psychiatry 44(2):178–188

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Huys QJM, Moutoussis M, Williams J (2011) Are computational models of any use to psychiatry? Neural Netw 24(6):544–551

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Huys QJM, Eshel N, O’Nions E, Sheridan L, Dayan P, Roiser JP (2012) Bonsai trees in your head: how the Pavlovian system sculpts goal-directed choices by pruning decision trees. PLoS Comput Biol 8(3):e1002410

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Huys QJM, Pizzagalli DA, Bogdan R, Dayan P (2013) Mapping anhedonia onto reinforcement learning: a behavioural meta-analysis. Biol Mood Anxiety Disord 3(1):12

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Jensen J, Willeit M, Zipursky RB, Savina I, Smith AJ, Menon M, Crawley AP, Kapur S (2008) The formation of abnormal associations in schizophrenia: neural and behavioral evidence. Neuropsychopharmacology 33(3):473–479

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Juckel G, Schlagenhauf F, Koslowski M, Filonov D, Wstenberg T, Villringer A, Knutson B, Kienast T, Gallinat J, Wrase J, Heinz A (2006) Dysfunction of ventral striatal reward prediction in schizophrenic patients treated with typical, not atypical, neuroleptics. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 187(2):222–228

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Kapur S (2003) Psychosis as a state of aberrant salience: a framework linking biology, phenomenology, and pharmacology in schizophrenia. Am J Psychiatry 160(1):13–23

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kapur S, Zipursky R, Jones C, Remington G, Houle S (2000) Relationship between dopamine d(2) occupancy, clinical response, and side effects: a double-blind pet study of first-episode schizophrenia. Am J Psychiatry 157(4):514–520

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kendler KS, Karkowski LM, Prescott CA (1999) Causal relationship between stressful life events and the onset of major depression. Am J Psychiatry 156:837–841

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • King R, Barchas JD, Huberman BA (1984) Chaotic behavior in dopamine neurodynamics. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 81(4):1244–1247

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • King-Casas B, Tomlin D, Anen C, Camerer CF, Quartz SR, Montague PR (2005) Getting to know you: reputation and trust in a two-person economic exchange. Science 308(5718):78–83

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • King-Casas B, Sharp C, Lomax-Bream L, Lohrenz T, Fonagy P, Montague PR (2008) The rupture and repair of cooperation in borderline personality disorder. Science 321(5890):806–810

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Koshelev M, Lohrenz T, Vannucci M, Montague PR (2010) Biosensor approach to psychopathology classification. PLoS Comput Biol 6(10):e1000966

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kumar P, Waiter G, Ahearn T, Milders M, Reid I, Steele JD (2008) Abnormal temporal difference reward-learning signals in major depression. Brain 131(Pt 8):2084–2093

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Laruelle M, Kegeles LS, Abi-Darghama A (2003) Glutamate, dopamine, and schizophrenia: from pathophysiology to treatment. Ann N Y Acad Sci 1003(1):138–158

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lieder F, Goodman N, Huys QJM (2013) Learned helplessness and generalization. Proc Annu Conf Cognit Sci Soc

    Google Scholar 

  • Lucantonio F, Stalnaker TA, Shaham Y, Niv Y, Schoenbaum G (2012) The impact of orbitofrontal dysfunction on cocaine addiction. Nat Neurosci 15(3):358–366

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mackey MC, Milton JG (1987) Dynamical diseases. Ann NY Acad Sci 504:16–32

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Maia TV, Frank MJ (2011) From reinforcement learning models to psychiatric and neurological disorders. Nat Neurosci 14(2):154–162

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Maier S, Seligman M (1976) Learned helplessness: theory and evidence. J Exp Psychol Gen 105(1):3–46

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maier SF, Watkins LR (2005) Stressor controllability and learned helplessness: the roles of the dorsal raphe nucleus, serotonin, and corticotropin-releasing factor. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 29(4–5):829–841

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Marr D (1982) Vision. Freeman, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • McClelland J, Rumelhart D, Hinton GE (1986) Parallel distributed processing. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller WR, Seligman ME (1975) Depression and learned helplessness in man. J Abnorm Psychol 84(3):228–238

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Milton JG (2010) Epilepsy as a dynamic disease: a tutorial of the past with an eye to the future. Epilepsy Behav 18(1–2):33–44

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Montague PR, Dayan P, Sejnowski TJ (1996) A framework for mesencephalic dopamine systems based on predictive Hebbian learning. J Neurosci 16(5):1936–1947

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Montague PR, Dolan RJ, Friston KJ, Dayan P (2012) Computational psychiatry. Trends Cogn Sci 16(1):72–80

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Moutoussis M, Bentall RP, Williams J, Dayan P (2008) A temporal difference account of avoidance learning. Network 19(2):137–160

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Moutoussis M, Bentall RP, El-Deredy W, Dayan P (2011) Bayesian modelling of jumping-to-conclusions bias in delusional patients. Cognit Neuropsychiatr 16(5):422–447

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Murray GK, Corlett PR, Clark L, Pessiglione M, Blackwell AD, Honey G, Jones PB, Bullmore ET, Robbins TW, Fletcher PC (2008) Substantia nigra/ventral tegmental reward prediction error disruption in psychosis. Mol Psychiatry 13(3):239, 267–276

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nelson A, Killcross S (2006) Amphetamine exposure enhances habit formation. J Neurosci 26(14):3805–3812

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pizzagalli DA, Jahn AL, O’Shea JP (2005) Toward an objective characterization of an anhedonic phenotype: a signal-detection approach. Biol Psychiatry 57(4):319–327

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rao RP, Ballard DH (1999) Predictive coding in the visual cortex: a functional interpretation of some extra-classical receptive-field effects. Nat Neurosci 2(1):79–87

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ray D, King-Casas B, Montague PR, Dayan P (2009) Bayesian model of behaviour in economic games. In: Koller D, Schuurmans D, Bengio Y, Bottou L (eds) Advances in neural information processing systems 21. Proceedings of the twenty-second annual conference on neural information processing systems, Vancouver. Curran Associates, New York, pp 1345–1352

    Google Scholar 

  • Redish AD (2004) Addiction as a computational process gone awry. Science 306(5703):1944–1947

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Redish AD, Jensen S, Johnson A (2008) A unified framework for addiction: vulnerabilities in the decision process. Behav Brain Sci 31(4):415–437, discussion 437–487

    PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Schultz W, Dayan P, Montague PR (1997) A neural substrate of prediction and reward. Science 275(5306):1593–1599

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Seeman P, Lee T, Chau-Wong M, Wong K (1976) Antipsychotic drug doses and neuroleptic/dopamine receptors. Nature 261(5562):717–719

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Seligman ME, Maier SF (1967) Failure to escape traumatic shock. J Exp Psychol 74(1):1–9

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Smith KA, Fairburn CG, Cowen PJ (1997) Relapse of depression after rapid depletion of tryptophan. Lancet 249:915–919

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith AJ, Li M, Becker S, Kapur S (2004) A model of antipsychotic action in conditioned avoidance: a computational approach. Neuropsychopharmacology 29(6):1040–1049

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Smith AJ, Becker S, Kapur S (2005) A computational model of the functional role of the ventral-striatal d2 receptor in the expression of previously acquired behaviors. Neural Comput 17(2):361–395

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Smith AJ, Li M, Becker S, Kapur S (2007) Linking animal models of psychosis to computational models of dopamine function. Neuropsychopharmacology 32(1):54–66

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Soubrié P (1986) Reconciling the role of central serotonin neurons in human and animal behaviour. Behav Brain Sci 9:319–364

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Steele JD, Kumar P, Ebmeier KP (2007) Blunted response to feedback information in depressive illness. Brain 130(Pt 9):2367–2374

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Stephan KE, Baldeweg T, Friston KJ (2006) Synaptic plasticity and dysconnection in schizophrenia. Biol Psychiatry 59(10):929–939

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Stephan KE, Penny WD, Daunizeau J, Moran RJ, Friston KJ (2009) Bayesian model selection for group studies. Neuroimage 46(4):1004–1017

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sutton RS, Barto AG (1998) Reinforcement learning: an introduction. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Tomlin D, Kayali MA, King-Casas B, Anen C, Camerer CF, Quartz SR, Montague PR (2006) Agent-specific responses in the cingulate cortex during economic exchanges. Science 312(5776):1047–1050

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Volkow ND, Fowler JS, Wang GJ, Baler R, Telang F (2009) Imaging dopamine’s role in drug abuse and addiction. Neuropharmacology 56(Suppl 1):3–8

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Willner P (1997) Validity, reliability and utility of the chronic mild stress model of depression: a 10-year review and evaluation. Psychopharmacology (Berl) 134:319–329

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Yoshida W, Dolan RJ, Friston KJ (2008) Game theory of mind. PLoS Comput Biol 4(12):e1000254

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Yoshida W, Dziobek I, Kliemann D, Heekeren HR, Friston KJ, Dolan RJ (2010a) Cooperation and heterogeneity of the autistic mind. J Neurosci 30(26):8815–8818

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Yoshida W, Seymour B, Friston KJ, Dolan RJ (2010b) Neural mechanisms of belief inference during cooperative games. J Neurosci 30(32):10744–10751

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I thank Dominik Bach, Kay H. Brodersen, Anthony Cruickshank, Peter Dayan, Marc Guitart-Masip, Helene Haker, Gregor Hasler, Falk Lieder, Tiago Maia, John Milton, Michael Moutoussis, Peggy Seriès, and Klaas Enno Stephan for informative comments and discussions on an earlier version of this contribution.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Translational Neuromodeling Unit, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, ETH and University of Zurich, and Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Hospital of Psychiatry, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Quentin Huys

Authors
  1. Quentin Huys
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Quentin Huys .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Dieter Jaeger

  2. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Florida International University, Miami, Florida, USA

    Ranu Jung

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York

About this entry

Cite this entry

Huys, Q. (2014). Computational Psychiatry. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_501-2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_501-2

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-7320-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Biomedicine and Life SciencesReference Module Biomedical and Life Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Computational Psychiatry
    Published:
    01 August 2014

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_501-2

  2. Original

    Computational Psychiatry
    Published:
    07 February 2014

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7320-6_501-1

Search

Navigation