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Pons connectivity correlates with neurophysiological and clinical signatures of predictive coding in psychosis

Neuropsychopharmacology volume 50, pages 351–352 (2025)Cite this article

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A Correction to this article was published on 19 March 2025

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Sensory predictive coding allows all species to efficiently process sensory information, prioritizing unpredicted, and possibly life-threatening sensations. While some sensory predictions derive from contextual cues and recent history, predictions based on self-actions have the added impact of being overlearned and possibly innate. The pons passes vital sensory information from the cortex to cerebellum to facilitate predictive coding of self-generated actions. Pontine pathway deficiencies could underlie impairments in clinical disorders [1]. And yet, the pons is overlooked in neuroimaging research with little data, until recently, on cortico-pontine connectivity topography [2].

Seeding from the pons (Fig. 1B), we examined pons connectivity and N1 attenuation relations in a large non-psychiatric healthy control group (HC; n = 124). Pons-to-cerebellar vermis connectivity scaled with greater N1 attenuation during vocalization versus passive listening [4] (Fig. 1C). PSP (n = 143) exhibited pons-to-cerebellar vermis hypoconnectivity versus HC (Fig. 1B); however, N1 attenuation was not directly correlated with pons connectivity in PSP. Exploratory analyses revealed that the pons and N1 attenuation correlation was present for PSP with heightened pons-to-postcentral gyrus connectivity (Fig. 1D). This was the only significant area to emerge from a whole-brain model linking pons connectivity with N1 attenuation. The postcentral gyrus processes bodily sensations associated with vocalization. Greater pons-to-postcentral gyrus connectivity may represent a compensatory mechanism for PSP, allowing the pons-to-cerebellum circuit to attenuate responses to self-generated sensations. Conversely, weaker pons-to-cerebellar vermis connectivity correlated with worse hallucination severity for PSP with schizophrenia (Fig. 1E). The same pontine-cerebellar circuit underlying successful predictive coding was implicated in a clinical manifestation of failed predictive coding.

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Fig. 1: Auditory predictive coding in psychosis.

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References

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Acknowledgements

We thank Judith M. Ford for contributing the data presented in this paper.

Funding

SVA was supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs (CX002355). JPYH was supported by a Veterans Integrated Service Network 21 Early Career Award. Data reported in this paper was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R03MH121900 to JMF).

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  1. Mental Health Service, San Francisco Veterans Affairs Health Care System, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Samantha V. Abram & Jessica P. Y. Hua

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Samantha V. Abram & Jessica P. Y. Hua

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  1. Samantha V. Abram
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  2. Jessica P. Y. Hua
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SVA wrote the paper. JPYH edited the paper and prepared the figure.

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Correspondence to Samantha V. Abram.

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Abram, S.V., Hua, J.P.Y. Pons connectivity correlates with neurophysiological and clinical signatures of predictive coding in psychosis. Neuropsychopharmacol. 50, 351–352 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41386-024-01919-x

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