On Monday 12 June 2023, we are in for a treat when Professor Micah Allen will give a talk entitled "Towards a Computational Psychiatry of Interoceptive Dysfunction". The talk will be held in the MR Conference Room and start 9:15.

Abstract

Interoception represents our perception, awareness, and metacognitive beliefs concerning the physiological status of homeostasis and our visceral body. The psychological literature has long stressed a fundamental link between interoception, brain-body interaction, and emotion. In recent times, there's a growing consensus that these functions are extensively disrupted across a wide range of psychiatric, health-harming, and neurological diseases. Yet, our grasp of the neural mechanisms underpinning interoception is constrained by significant methodological and theoretical challenges. This talk will provide an overview of two key threads of our research aiming to address these issues. First, I will present a synopsis of a large-scale observational data science project where we developed and assessed novel model-based biomarkers of interoception within a neuroimaging cohort of 530 participants. Following this, I will provide a glimpse into our upcoming neuropharmacological work, wherein we will harness these methods to decipher how cannabinoids' psychoactive and neurobiological mechanisms may interact with interoceptive processes.