Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging

About: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging is a facility organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Functional magnetic resonance imaging & Visual cortex. The organization has 470 authors who have published 1891 publications receiving 185608 citations.

The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?

Abstract: A free-energy principle has been proposed recently that accounts for action, perception and learning. This Review looks at some key brain theories in the biological (for example, neural Darwinism) and physical (for example, information theory and optimal control theory) sciences from the free-energy perspective. Crucially, one key theme runs through each of these theories — optimization. Furthermore, if we look closely at what is optimized, the same quantity keeps emerging, namely value (expected reward, expected utility) or its complement, surprise (prediction error, expected cost). This is the quantity that is optimized under the free-energy principle, which suggests that several global brain theories might be unified within a free-energy framework.

Functional and effective connectivity: a review.

Abstract: Over the past 20 years, neuroimaging has become a predominant technique in systems neuroscience. One might envisage that over the next 20 years the neuroimaging of distributed processing and connectivity will play a major role in disclosing the brain's functional architecture and operational principles. The inception of this journal has been foreshadowed by an ever-increasing number of publications on functional connectivity, causal modeling, connectomics, and multivariate analyses of distributed patterns of brain responses. I accepted the invitation to write this review with great pleasure and hope to celebrate and critique the achievements to date, while addressing the challenges ahead.

The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia

Abstract: Schizophrenic patients have bizarre experiences which reflect a disorder in the contents of consciousness. For example, patients hear voices talking about them or they are convinced that alien forces are controlling their actions. Their abnormal behaviour includes incoherence and lack of will. In this book an explanation of these baffling signs and symptoms is provided using the framework of cognitive neuropsychology.The cognitive abnormalities that underlie these signs and symptoms suggest impairment in a system which constructs and monitors representations of certain abstract (especially mental) events in consciousness. For example, schizophrenic patients can no longer construct representations of their intentions to act. Thus, if actions occur, these will be experienced as coming out of the blue and hence can seem alien. The patient who lacks awareness of his own intentions will stop acting spontaneously and hence will show a lack of will.The psychological processes that are abnormal in schizophrenia can be related to underlying brain systems using evidence from human and animal neuropsychology. Interactions between prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain, especially temporal cortex appear critical for constructing the contents of consciousness. It is these interactions that are likely to be impaired in schizophrenia.