Drozdstoy Stoyanov

 

There is delivered in this paper a conceptual background of a research program to re-validate psychopathological constructs by means of functional neuroimaging. The philosophical concepts employed are identity and supervenience theory of mind, and eliminative materialism. 

Our empirical research is then mapped on those theoretical frameworks.

There are reported differential activations of clinical depression assessment scale between healthy controls and depressed patients on one hand and between depression and schizophrenia clinical populations of the other. Further there has been explored the possibility to discriminate the two nosological groups by means of machine learning experiment.

Our bottom line message is that the complexity and inter-disciplinary nature of psychiatric diagnosis demands profound understanding of mind-brain interactions. This understanding calls for pluralist account concerning possible solutions of the psycho-physical problem and refraining from attempts to impose universal, monopolistic and paradigmatic decisions.

 

psychopathology, neuroscience, validity operations, mind-brain problem, functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI)

 

 

Received on March 12, 2020

Accepted on April 30, 2020

Firstly published online on June 25, 2020