Brains Speed Up Perception by Guessing What’s Next
This ties in quite nicely with Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIu_dJGyIQI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIu_dJGyIQI</a><p>There are so many strands of neuroscience that show predictive coding now. There's a really nice example in the use of common vs unusual words in sentences. If you're using fMRI to scan someone while they read these two sentences:<p>The jam on the motorway made everything slow.<p>The jam on the motorway made everything sticky.<p>You'll see a flash of activity when people read the word "sticky" rather than the more common word in that context "slow". The theory is that when everything in the sentence proceeds as predicted there's very little need to update prior expectations, but when you come across something that goes against previous predictions it's a signal that something needs to be actively thought about.