Closing in - Day 8 (of 10) of the brain ideas countdown.

The topic: some of the most interesting ideas that brain researchers are pursuing right now. How likely is each idea to be true? If true, what are the implications?

Brain idea 3: We rely on our memories of the past to predict the future.

When deciding between different options, we often make predictions of what would happen if we chose each. And those predictions in turn rely on memories of what we've experienced in the past. In fact, physicists have figured out ways to quantify how future predictions are limited by memory. And brain researchers are using those ways to understand how close different parts of our brains are to making perfect predictions. In this work, prediction is not fortune telling, but reflects the structure of the world (eg In the simplest case, a ball moving left will be displaced to the left in the future).

The friendly version:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262044752/memory-as-prediction/

The deeper dive: by @sepalmer
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1506855112

For days 1-7, click here: #BrainIdeasCountdown

#neuroscience