Dynamical systems in computational psychiatry: A toy-model to apprehend the dynamics of psychiatric symptoms.

We show that the challenges of dynamical systems allow to understand the interactions of psychiatric symptoms with environmental, descriptive, subjective or biological variables. Although this non-linear dynamical model has limitations (e.g., explanatory scope or discriminant validity), simulations provide at least five main interests for clinical psychiatry, such as a visualization of the potential different evolution of psychiatric disorders, formulation of clinical cases, information about attracting states and bifurcations, or the possibility of a nosological refinement of psychiatric models (e.g., staging and symptom network models).