Special Seminar by Dr Katharina Wellstein
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Date and time: 01 August 2024, 11am to 12.30pm
Talk location: Redmond Barry Building, Level 12, Room 1201
Light refreshments location: Redmond Barry Building, Level 12 pantry
Talk details:
Title:
Hierarchical Gaussian Filtering under paranoid ideation
Hierarchical Gaussian Filtering under paranoid ideation
Abstract:
Computational Psychiatry aims at understanding the mechanisms behind psychiatric disorders and symptoms. The predictive coding framework has been very helpful approach to doing so. The Hierarchical Gaussian Filter (HGF) is a hierarchical model that implements Bayesian inference as it is described in the predictive coding framework mathematically and serves as a toll to investigate these mechanisms. However, the application of the HGF requires a lot of background knowledge that may not been intuitively accessible to researchers who want to use the model. In this talk I will give a short introduction and offer a discussion on the HGF and illustrate the model on the example of a study investigating paranoia in the general population. In doing so I will be presenting results from this study showcasing aberrances in Bayesian inference as a function of high paranoia scores (based on the Paranoia Checklist).
Speaker bio:
Dr. Katharina Wellstein is a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the University of Newcastle NSW where she is investigating the mechanistic underpinnings of (sub)clinical negative symptoms using fMRI and generative modeling. This research is conducted in Prof. Michael Breakspear’s Systems Neuroscience Group. She completed her PhD at the Translational Neuromodeling Unit (TNU) at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich Switzerland with Prof. Klaas Enno Stephan on psychometric properties of experimental tools in computational psychiatry. At the TNU she was involved in various projects using imaging (3T, 7T fMRI and EEG) to investigate psychiatric disorders and interoception from a (Bayesian) predictive coding perspective. She was also part of the organizing committee of the annual international Computational Psychiatry Course in Zurich.
Dr. Katharina Wellstein is a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the University of Newcastle NSW where she is investigating the mechanistic underpinnings of (sub)clinical negative symptoms using fMRI and generative modeling. This research is conducted in Prof. Michael Breakspear’s Systems Neuroscience Group. She completed her PhD at the Translational Neuromodeling Unit (TNU) at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich Switzerland with Prof. Klaas Enno Stephan on psychometric properties of experimental tools in computational psychiatry. At the TNU she was involved in various projects using imaging (3T, 7T fMRI and EEG) to investigate psychiatric disorders and interoception from a (Bayesian) predictive coding perspective. She was also part of the organizing committee of the annual international Computational Psychiatry Course in Zurich.