Opinion
The proactive brain: using analogies and associations to generate predictions

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Rather than passively ‘waiting’ to be activated by sensations, it is proposed that the human brain is continuously busy generating predictions that approximate the relevant future. Building on previous work, this proposal posits that rudimentary information is extracted rapidly from the input to derive analogies linking that input with representations in memory. The linked stored representations then activate the associations that are relevant in the specific context, which provides focused predictions. These predictions facilitate perception and cognition by pre-sensitizing relevant representations. Predictions regarding complex information, such as those required in social interactions, integrate multiple analogies. This cognitive neuroscience framework can help explain a variety of phenomena, ranging from recognition to first impressions, and from the brain's ‘default mode’ to a host of mental disorders.

Section snippets

General framework

When we are immersed in the world of neuroscience findings, the brain might seem like a collection of many little modules, each expert in a specific task. Is it possible that, instead, one can account for much of the brain's operation using a small set of unifying principles? One such principle could be that the brain is proactive in that it regularly anticipates the future, a proposal that has been promoted in the past in different forms and contexts. Specifically, I propose that the cognitive

Associations as the building blocks of predictions

How does our experience translate into focused, testable predictions? The answer proposed is that memory is used to generate predictions via associative activation. In memory, our experiences are represented in structures that cluster together related information. For example, objects that tend to appear together are linked on some level, and these representations include properties that are inherent to and typical of that same experience. Such structures have been termed ‘context frames’ 1, 2,

Analogies as the trigger of predictions

I propose that our brains are equipped with the ability to extract gist, minimally analyzed information, from a situation and to use it to derive an analogy, mapping the novel input to similar representations in memory. Figure 2 depicts a simple example, where a new exemplar of a certain object class is analogically mapped to the corresponding prototype, and in Box 2 I describe a model of how such an analogy can be accomplished rapidly using coarse information.

Traditionally this process has

Neural substrates

Many cortical projections that connect separate regions are known to be reciprocal 19, 20, 21, 22, which suggests bi-directional cortical communication. According to some estimates, the number of feedback (top-down) projections might even exceed the number of feedforward (bottom-up) connections [23]. Although this aspect of the anatomy is known, and the implication of omnipresent bi-directional flow consequently seems highly reasonable, this finding has not yet been sufficiently incorporated

Applied predictions

Predictions, as described here, span a wide spectrum of complexity and function. At one extreme, there is the simple prediction that stems from a simple association (e.g. knowing to expect pain after bumping your toe on the leg of the sofa). At the other extreme, one can anticipate complicated experiences, plan far ahead, or mentally ‘travel’ in time to the future, based on simulations and memory. In spite of this extreme variety, there is no evidence to indicate that predictions of various

Predictions from within: mind-wandering and mental time travel

The focus here has been on predictions triggered by and geared towards the sensory world around us. But thinking about the future is often oriented internally, as we do when we plan, imagine, reason, fantasize, and so on. There has been a recent surge of interest in the subject, which includes stimulating findings from neuroimaging and patient work 62, 63, 64, 65. This ability to project oneself into the future and imagine upcoming or imaginary situations can be seen as a prediction tool, which

Concluding remarks and predictions about predictions

I propose that the knowledge that is stored in our memory exerts its contribution to behavior by way of predictions, and that our perception of the environment relies on existing knowledge as much as it does on incoming sensory information. The framework proposed here is composed of three main ingredients: associations, analogies and predictions. It can be summarized as follows: the input is linked to memory via analogies, and once an analogy has been found, it elicits the activation of the

Acknowledgements

I thank E. Aminoff, J. Boshyan, M. Fenske, N. Gronau, K. Kveraga, M. Mason and three anonymous reviewers for their help. Supported by NINDS R01-NS044319 and NS050615, and the MIND Institute.

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