Bridging the Neurocomputational Explanations of Paranoia: From Cognition to Clinic

Paranoia warps how the brain interprets social interactions, and researchers will now induce it temporarily in healthy volunteers using THC—the psychoactive compound in cannabis—to map the neural shift from trust to suspicion. Current treatments for paranoia often miss the mark because scientists do not fully understand how the brain processes social cues during paranoid states. This project fills that gap by combining interactive social tasks, mathematical models, and brain imaging. By comparing THC-induced paranoia in healthy people with data from patients experiencing persecutory delusions, the team can isolate the neural and computational signatures of paranoia across the full spectrum—from neurotransmitter activity to real-world clinical symptoms. If successful, the work will produce a free, browser-based platform called Hypatia, where researchers worldwide can test new models and therapies. This could lead to treatments that directly target the social brain mechanisms underlying paranoia, rather than relying on broad antipsychotic drugs. The research is primarily fundamental science—decoding how the brain encodes threat in social contexts—but similar foundational work on fear circuits has already reshaped anxiety treatments. A deeper understanding of paranoia’s neural basis could eventually reduce the isolation and distress that millions of patients experience daily.