Math and the Mind

trinity.edu

In the 18th century, an English Presbyterian minister named Thomas Bayes (1701-1761) came up with a theorem. Not only a man of the cloth, Bayes was also a statistician and philosopher. Basically, he wrote a formula for figuring out the probability that a prediction would be correct, given past and current observations. The idea that a mathematical formula would be of any use in understanding mental disorders is not new, but it's never worked before. Still, there are those who see a light at the end of this particular tunnel. It's possible, they contend, that, in individuals with schizophrenia and autism in particular, sensory distortions may alter the way experience and new evidence are weighed. There are still many questions to be answered, but some studies have offered evidence that backs the concept: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/bayesian-reasoning-implicated-some-mental-disorders?utm_source=Society+for+Science+Newsletters&utm_campaign=0caa912e9b-Latest_From_Science_News&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a4c415a67f-0caa912e9b-104586561