Rick Adams
Centre for Medical Image Computing and Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience
University College London
The hypothesis that excitatory and inhibitory functioning in neural circuits is ‘imbalanced’ in schizophrenia (and psychosis spectrum disorders) is well known, but the details of this imbalance are unclear. I have used dynamic causal modelling of M/EEG data from people with schizophrenia diagnoses to estimate excitatory and inhibitory cell function in vivo. This work implies that a lack of pyramidal cell excitability is a core dysfunction in the disorder, but also that psychosis symptoms may be due – conversely – to disinhibition. Symptoms may therefore be the price the brain pays to restore function in imbalanced circuits.
View a recording of this session here.