Predictive Brain Archives - Farther to Go!

The Map Is Not the Territory

December 13, 2021 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

And the menu is not the meal. In other words, beware of confusing models of reality with reality. It sounds obvious, but it’s much easier said than done, so we end up believing a lot of things that are just not true.

Many of our most basic assumptions about ourselves, and society, are false. —Leonard Mlodinow, Subliminal

There’s a handful of threshold concepts that can shed some light on how we might know ourselves (or think we do) and how we might know others (or think we do)—and cause us to consider the possibility that we might be wrong about how we do both.

In and of themselves, threshold concepts are both transformative and irreversible. Once you fully grasp them, your understanding of what underlies your experience, your perception, and your behavior will be transformed. Once you cross the threshold from not knowing to knowing, you will no longer be able to view yourself, others, or the world the way you did before.

Threshold concepts are inherently difficult to grasp.

That’s why these concepts are considered to be troublesome knowledge. They’re troublesome because they conflict with preexisting beliefs, they are counterintuitive and disconcerting, and/or they seem illogical. They don’t slip easily into the mental architecture most of us have already constructed. In fact, they often bounce right off. So they bear repeating…repeatedly. (Recently someone said she had probably heard me mention a particular threshold concept a hundred times, but it was just in that moment that she got it.)

Each of these concepts is important individually, but many of them connect with and relate to each other. That’s another aspect of threshold concepts: they are integrative.

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The brain is not wired to experience reality as it is. That’s troublesome because it’s counterintuitive and conflicts with our belief that we experience an objective reality. But the interior of the brain is a dark, silent space, in which the primary activity is the interpretation of electrical impulses to give us a sense of what is going on inside and outside of us.

Even if all our senses are intact and our brain is functioning normally, we do not have direct access to the physical world. It may feel as if we have direct access, but this is an illusion created by our brain. —Chris Frith, neuropsychologist

There is a real world. But you’ve never lived there. You haven’t been there even for a visit. —Susana Martinez-Conde, neuroscientist

Two

The brain operates on autopilot approximately 95% of the time, which means System 1 (the unconscious) directs most of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. That’s troublesome because our experience is that our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are consciously determined. But consciousness can only process 40 bits of information at a time, while the unconscious process 11 million bits at a time.

If we were forced always to consider every aspect of the situation around us and had to weigh all our options about what to do, humankind would have died out long ago. —Timothy D. Wilson, social psychologist

It can take huge amounts of time for our conscious brain to think about every scenario deliberately. Everyday life requires us to suspend rationality, to be mindless about countless risks. —Shankar Vedantam, journalist and host of The Hidden Brain podcast

Three

The brain is predictive rather than reactive. It focuses on determining what’s going to happen next so it can figure out ahead of time what action to take instead of waiting for something to happen and then deciding what to do about it. That’s troublesome because, once again, our experience is that, moment-to-moment, we are making conscious or intentional decisions based on our conscious perceptions.

Your brain is wired to ask the question, “The last time I was in a situation like this, what sensations did I encounter and how did I act?” —Lisa Feldman Barrett, neuroscientist and psychologist

Our primary contact with the world…is via our expectations about what we are about to see or experience. —Andy Clark, cognitive philosopher

Four

The brain pays far more attention to what we do than to what we feel, what we think, or what we think about doing. This is troublesome because we tend to believe that the brain is for thinking and perceiving—I think, therefore I am, as Rene Descartes famously said—and not for figuring out what action to take. We also expect there to be a more direct correlation than there is between what we think about doing (intend) and the action we ultimately take.

Our brains interpret the world primarily as a forum for action and only secondarily as a realm of facts. —Colin G. DeYoung, psychologist

The course of an individual’s life is determined by the action she takes in the world. —Gabrielle Oettingen, psychologist

Five

The brain generates a mental model of the world that represents what’s normal for each of us both internally and externally. Our model of the world determines what we pay attention to, how we interpret what we pay attention to, and the meaning we assign to it. That’s troublesome because we have the sense that we directly perceive what is available for us to perceive, when in fact we perceive everything through our unique filters.

Consciousness is a way of projecting all the activity in your nervous system into a simpler form. [It] gives you a summary that is useful for the larger picture, useful at the scale of apples and rivers and humans with whom you might be able to mate. —David Eagleman, neuroscientist

When we experience things as being real, we are less able to appreciate that our perceptual worlds may differ from those of others. —Anil K. Seth, neuroscientist

We Ought to Be Less Certain…

In attempting to know ourselves, we’re faced with the same problems we encounter when attempting to know anyone else.

For one thing, we have no direct access to either our unconscious or the unconscious of anyone else, even though that’s the part of the brain that runs us most of the time. For another, just about every perception we have had or will have is an interpretation. We are interpreting ourselves just as we are interpreting others. And those interpretations, generated by internal or external cues, are based on our individual mental model of the world, which means they are all highly subjective and necessarily distorted.

Furthermore, we’re literally living in the past, since our predictive (autopilot) brain has already determined the nature of a situation and initiated the appropriate response before we’re consciously aware a response is called for.

In spite of all this, we have a strong, if false, sense of certainty about who we are, who others are and what they are experiencing, as well as our overall experience of being in the world.

…and More Curious

The best way to get a remotely objective clue as to who we—or someone else might be—is to pay attention to what we or they do, note our interpretation of the action, and attempt to reason backward. What might that behavior indicate about me or Joe or Olivia? What belief or character/personality trait might that reflect? What don’t I know? What other explanations could there be?

There’s no guarantee we’ll come up with the correct answer, of course. But curiosity gives us some room to maneuver, to question our assumptions and interpretations instead of merrily running off a cliff with them.

A Brief “Reality” Check

July 31, 2021 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

We all accept the reality presented to us.
–David Eagleman

If you’re a synesthete, your reality may differ considerably from consensus reality. In your reality, numbers and letters of the alphabet might have colors. And they might have personalities. Or maybe you can see sounds or taste words.

It used to be thought that synesthesia was a rare condition, but it now appears to be present in at least 4% of the population and likely has a genetic trigger.

David Eagleman, who studies synesthesia (because of course he does) thinks non-synesthetes may have synesthetic correspondences in the brain but just aren’t aware of them. For example, people tend to think louder tones are brighter than soft tones and that dark liquids have stronger smells than lighter ones.

One of the shapes on the right is named “bouba” and the other is named “kiki.” Which do you think is which?

Some synesthetes consider the condition to be uncomfortable, some consider it a gift, and still others don’t even know they have it. Remember that experience is reality. At least it’s the only reality we have access to. So if your brain connects the color purple with the letter J, then J is purple. Consider the implications.

If you do or you don’t automatically associate colors with numbers and letters, are you creating that reality? Yes. Do you have any control over that reality you’re creating? No.

You operate within a host of biological constraints, many of which you share with all humans, others of which you share with various groups of them. You also operate within cultural constraints and the constraints of your own temperament, knowledge, and experience.

All of these constraints, which are part of your mental model of the world, conspire to determine what you perceive of the world “out there.” Your brain gives rise to (creates) your experience by matching streams of electrical impulses with prior experience, expectations, or beliefs about the way the world is. As a result, you are actively looking for certain things that you predict you will find so you will know how to respond.

Our experienced world comes from the inside out, not just the outside in.
–Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex

X Is for eXpectations

April 12, 2017 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Life is an ongoing series of experiences, one after another after another. When you’re in the midst of one of them, you experience it. After it’s over, you explain it, meaning you remember it and tell a story about it, incorporating it into your ongoing narration.

But before anything even occurs, you have an expectation about what will or won’t happen, what should or shouldn’t happen, or how events will unfold and the consequences that are likely to ensue.

Expectation is

A belief about what should happen or the way things should be.
An estimate or forecast of a future situation based on present or past experiences.
Anticipation: looking forward to something, whether hopefully or fearfully.

Experience is:

The apprehension of an object, thought, or emotion through the senses or mind.
An event or a series of events participated in or lived through.
Direct personal participation or observation.

Explanation is:

A story about how or why something happened or turned out the way it did.
Rationalization, justification, and/or judgment about the experience.
The cognitive process of making something seem consistent with or based on reason.

There’s some degree of conscious (System 2) involvement in all three phases of an experience. But there’s even more unconscious (System 1) involvement in them.

The Way Things Should Be

According to Andy Clark, philosopher and cognitive scientist at the University of Edinburgh:

Our primary contact with the world…is via our expectations about what we are about to see or experience.

Your expectations are constrained not only by what has already happened (your past experiences), but also—and even more significantly—by the stories (and explanations) you’ve constructed about them. Your expectations, arising from your mental model of the world, determine much of what you make of your experiences.

It’s worth remembering that your experience of what’s going on in your mind and in the world is not the same as what is actually going on in either your mind or in the world.

In addition to helping you navigate the terrain you inhabit, your mental model gives rise to your sense of the way things should be. It generates expectations that are either confirmed or denied, as well as assumptions, biases, etc., that determine what you pay attention to, what you perceive (even what you are able to perceive), how you interpret and respond to what you perceive, and the meaning you assign to it.

Who I am is the habit of what I always was and who I’ll be is the result. —Louise Erdrich

Although it doesn’t have to be, the cycle of expectation/experience/
explanation can be a vicious one that narrows your perspective—and your world.

Generating expectations isn’t something you are doing; it’s something your brain is doing. You may have come across advice to do away with expectations because they are either “self-defeating” or nothing but a prelude to disappointment. (Alexander Pope, Shakespeare, and Sylvia Plath are just a few who have linked expectations with disappointment.) The advice to eliminate them is based on a belief that expectations are consciously created, which gives us control over them.

Your Brain is Predictive, not Reactive.

Your felt experience may be that something happens and you react to it, but the reality is that your brain is not reactive but predictive. It is always doing its best to anticipate what’s going to happen next, as if it were playing a never-ending game of chess, continuously anticipating and preparing you for your next move.

Your brain generates multiple possible representations of what to expect in the environment. The representation with the smallest prediction error is selected. However the generation of representations is constrained by what is stored in memory and by the sampling of the environment —Dirk De Ridder, Jan Verplaetse, and Sven Vanneste, Frontiers in Psychology

You’re only aware of what your brain thinks you need to know, when you need to know it. Although your reactions and responses feel spontaneous and freely chosen, most of the time they are neither.

The unconscious is always several steps ahead of the conscious part of your brain. As neuroscientists have pointed out, this is what makes activities such as sports possible. If the brain was merely reactive, it wouldn’t operate fast enough to enable you to hit a baseball or block a goal. A reactive brain wouldn’t have helped Michael Phelps win his 10^thgold medal while swimming blind after his goggles filled with water. All of his previous practice, experience, and knowledge gave his brain a solid basis for predicting what to expect and what he needed to do in order to win.

Because your brain is predictive:

You are not constantly surprised.
You don’t always have a choice.
You are able to engage in activities that require quick and accurate responses.
You are capable of learning from your experiences.
You don’t have to think about every little thing you do in the course of a day.
You find it difficult to change undesirable habits.
You may be tricked by various types of illusions.
You are unaware of your visual blind spot.

Your predictive brain—and the expectations it creates—can be a major obstacle when it comes to behavior change if you don’t take it into account. The neurons in your brain are constantly firing, interacting, and stimulating each other at various rates. If you stick to the belief that you always have a choice and try to use willpower to override your brain’s wiring, you will make things much harder for yourself than they need to be.

Not only can you not stop your brain from generating expectations, but doing so would be self-defeating. What you can do is become more aware of what those expectations are, check how closely they match reality, and evaluate how well they work for you in creating a satisfying and meaningful life.

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

Why Aren’t You Constantly Surprised?

January 29, 2016 by Joycelyn Campbell 1 Comment

You’ve probably never asked yourself that question, but it’s not as silly as it sounds. Think about it for a minute. How do you explain the fact that you aren’t constantly surprised by the wide variety of events, situations, and reactions you encounter?

The answer to that question also explains why it can’t possibly be true that “you always have a choice.”

Your brain is predictive, rather than reactive.

Until fairly recently, the commonly held belief was that the brain merely reacted to sensations it picked up, primarily from the outside world. The idea was that many of the brain’s neurons were dormant most of the time until they were stimulated by a sight or a sound.

But that is not the case. Neurons are constantly firing, interacting and stimulating each other at various rates. According to Lisa Feldman Barrett, University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University:

This brain activity represents millions of predictions of what you will encounter next in the world, based on your lifetime of past experience.

Your reactions are your body adjusting to the predictions your brain makes based on the state your body was in the last time it was in a similar situation.

Your brain is trying to put together thoughts, feelings, and perceptions so they arrive as needed, not a second afterward.

This activity does not take place at the conscious (System 2) level, but at the unconscious (System 1) level, which processes 11 million bits of information at a time. What you become aware of (thoughts, feelings, impulses, etc.) are the results of this unconscious processing. And you’re only aware of what your brain thinks you need to know, when you need to know it.

Furthermore, according to an article by a trio of neuroscientists published in Frontiers in Psychology:

Your brain generates multiple possible representations of what to expect in the environment. The representation with the smallest prediction error is selected.

However the generation of representations is constrained by what is stored in memory and by the sampling of the environment.

Another way to think about it is that these representations of what to expect are constrained by your mental model (see: Are You Thinking Outside the Box Yet?). Your brain constantly updates your mental model based on the accuracy of its predictions—as well as on its own agenda. Again, this occurs outside your conscious awareness.

Barrett provides this example:

You’re interacting with a friend and, based on context, your brain predicts that she will smile. This prediction drives your motor neurons to move your mouth in advance to smile back, and your movement causes your friend’s brain to issue new predictions and actions, back and forth, in a dance of prediction and action. If predictions are wrong, your brain has mechanisms to correct them and issue new ones.

The unconscious part of the brain is always several steps ahead of the conscious part. As both Barrett and neuroscientist David Eagleman have pointed out, this is what makes activities such as sports possible. If the brain was reactive, rather than predictive, it wouldn’t operate fast enough to enable you to hit a baseball or block a goal.

A merely reactive brain wouldn’t have helped Michael Phelps win his 10^th gold medal while swimming blind as a result of his goggles filling with water. All of his previous practice, experience, and knowledge gave his brain a solid basis for predicting what he needed to do in order to win. Pretty amazing.

Because your brain is predictive:

You are not constantly surprised.
You don’t always have a choice.
You are able to engage in activities that require quick and accurate responses.
You are capable of learning from your experiences.
You don’t have to think about every little thing you do in the course of a day.
You find it difficult to change undesirable habits.
You may be tricked by various types of illusions.
You are unaware of your visual blind spot.

Our primary contact with the world, all this suggests, is via our expectations about what we are about to see or experience. —Andy Clark, philosopher and cognitive scientist, University of Edinburgh

When you are surprised, it’s because your brain encounters unpredictable stimuli: something other than what it expected. Unpredictable stimuli require conscious (System 2) processing. To get a sense of this in action, take note of the occasions when you experience surprise and try to compare your actual experience to the experience your brain might have been expecting.

The fact that you are not, in fact, constantly surprised means that your brain is pretty darn good at making predictions the vast majority of the time.

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