A Bayesian account of 'hysteria'

This article provides a neurobiological account of symptoms that have been called 'hysterical', 'psychogenic' or 'medically unexplained', which we will call functional motor and sensory symptoms. We use a neurobiologically informed model of hierarchical Bayesian inference in the brain to explain functional motor and sensory symptoms in terms of perception and action arising from inference based on prior beliefs and sensory information. This explanation exploits the key balance between prior beliefs and sensory evidence that is mediated by (body focused) attention, symptom expectations, physical and emotional experiences and beliefs about illness. Crucially, this furnishes an explanation at three different…

• WT
  Wellcome Trust
• NI
  National Institute for Health and Care Research