Programm

Imagine waiting for the bus and having the impression that people around you are hostile, looking at you, talking about you, even following you. Such experiences are typical for patients with schizophrenia who suffer from delusions. In my talk, I propose that the emergence of delusions can, at least in part, be explained by impaired social cognition, and that social-cognitive impairments, in turn, can, at least in part, be explained by aberrant salience. In the first part of my talk, I will introduce schizophrenia, the concept of aberrant salience, and findings on decision-making in schizophrenia. The second part focuses on the neural basis of social cognition in schizophrenia. Here, I will highlight the relevance of the concepts of negative bias and hypermentalizing, and their potential neural correlates in schizophrenia. In the third part, I will present findings from experimental designs that connect aberrant salience and social cognition, offering a neurobiological social-cognitive framework for understanding how these processes interact in schizophrenia.