
Neural Networks Simulate Schizophrenia with Hyperlearning Theory - jgv
http://www.livescience.com/14058-schizophrenic-simulation-computer-acts-human-disease.html
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BasDirks
Without example in- and output or at least more detailed descriptions of the
actual experiments, it's hard to judge the value of the research. It's
(unfortunately very) easy to write a system that spews out grammatically
correct but otherwise incoherent sentences, a large part of NLP is about this
precise problem. I'd like to know more about how the structure of the
sentences by DISCERN match that of schizophrenic utterances.

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joelangeway
"You can't really prove anything with a computer model like this,"

Indeed, the behavior the article describes sounds like a normal failure mode
for a natural language processing computer program, "spewing out a jumble of
grammatically correct yet disassociated sentences".

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jarin
Interestingly enough, this seems to also explain why schizophrenics tend to
self-medicate with cigarettes and why smoking tends to increase focus in non-
schizophrenics (nicotine increases dopamine levels in the brain).

 _Edit: I misunderstood, schizophrenia seems to be caused by an elevated
dopamine level, not a deficiency._

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lars
Could you elaborate on that? If the idea is that dopamine causes schizophrenia
(to oversimplify things), I don't see why increasing dopamine with a cigarette
would work as self-medication for a schizophrenic.

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jarin
"A brain chemical called dopamine may help encode what counts as relevant
information in the human brain, researchers say."

I think the theory is that a lack of dopamine is what causes schizophrenia, by
making it harder for the brain to determine what information is relevant or
not.

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logjam
Schizophrenia is a complex disease, but most hypotheses have centered on
_hyperactive_ rather than hypoactive dopaminergic activity:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine_hypothesis_of_schizoph...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine_hypothesis_of_schizophrenia)

There is indeed greater nicotine use by those diagnosed with schizophrenia,
but the reasons are likely complex. Self-treatment of some symptoms may be
involved, but they may be more associated with nicotine's anxiolytic activity
or relief of some of schizophrenia's negative symptoms (e.g., apathy), rather
than positive symptoms like frank psychosis.

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jarin
Ah, ok I misunderstood what I read.

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sentfromfuture
If their theory is correct then the researchers have basically proved the
inevitability of SKYNET. When the Internet becomes self aware (able parse and
understand itself) its inability to forget will cause it to become
schizophrenic and start issuing terrorist threats against humans.

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sukuriant
you mean GLaDOS

