298. Perception: Chaos and Order | Dr. Karl Friston
The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
Prediction Errors in Relationships with Others
Depressive cognition can be understood as the collapse of a hierarchy, where an error at a low level propagates through the entire hierarchy of self-conceptualization. Serotonin levels and social status play a role in the resistance to error propagation. When errors in social communication occur three times, it indicates a pattern and requires a reconfiguration of the narrative. Depression is the collapse of resistance to error propagation in the hierarchy. Serotonergic reuptake inhibitors increase the resistance to error propagation at each level. Higher social status makes individuals more resistant to anomaly. The brain uses social status and trait neuroticism to determine how likely error messages are to propagate upward. Women, who are more sensitive to negative emotions due to their caregiving role, are more likely to propagate error messages up the hierarchy. The brain minimizes surprise by explaining away information based on top-down predictions. The weight given to ascending prediction errors is determined by neuromodulators such as serotonin. Depression prevents individuals from gathering evidence to update their explanations. The setting of resistance or precision in the brain is equivalent to the excitability of neuronal cells and is controlled by neuromodulators. Precision also relates to attention and the ability to ignore irrelevant information. When a disruption in social communication happens three times, precision may need to be redeployed to be more attentive to what is happening. This would lead to generative model changes and belief structure updates in the brain, allowing for a more accurate perception of the world. Overall, the insights discussed in this snip provide an understanding of prediction errors in relationships with others and the role of hierarchical processing in depression.
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