neurosciencestuff: Researchers pinpoint epicenter of brain’s predictive abilityIn recent years

neurosciencestuff: Researchers pinpoint epicenter of brain’s predictive abilityIn recent years, sci­en­tists have dis­cov­ered the human brain works on pre­dic­tions, con­trary to the pre­vi­ously accepted theory that it reacts to the sen­sa­tions it picks up from the out­side world. Experts say humans’ reac­tions are in fact the body adjusting to pre­dic­tions the brain is making based on the state of our body the last time it was in a sim­ilar situation.Now, Dis­tin­guished Uni­ver­sity Pro­fessor Lisa Feldman Bar­rett at North­eastern has reported finding the epi­center of those predictions.In an article pub­lished in Nature Reviews Neu­ro­science last week, Bar­rett con­tends that limbic tissue, which also helps to create emo­tions, is at the top of the brain’s pre­dic­tion hier­archy. She co-​​authored the paper with W. Kyle Sim­mons, of the Lau­reate Insti­tute for Brain Research in Tulsa, Oklahoma.“The unique con­tri­bu­tion of our paper is to show that limbic tissue, because of its struc­ture and the way the neu­rons are orga­nized, is pre­dicting,” Bar­rett said. “It is directing the pre­dic­tions to every­where else in the cortex, and that makes it very powerful.”For example, when a person is instructed to imagine a red apple in his or her mind’s eye, Bar­rett explained that limbic parts of the brain send pre­dic­tions to visual neu­rons and cause them to fire in dif­ferent pat­terns so the person can “see” a red apple.Bar­rett is a fac­ulty member in the Depart­ment of Psy­chology and is director of the Inter­dis­ci­pli­nary Affec­tive Sci­ence Lab­o­ra­tory. A pio­neer in the psy­chology of emo­tion and affec­tive neu­ro­science, she has chal­lenged the foun­da­tion of affec­tive sci­ence by showing that people are the archi­tects of their own emo­tional experiences.In the Nature paper, Bar­rett sum­ma­rized research on the cel­lular com­po­si­tion of limbic tissue, which shows that limbic regions of the brain send but do not receive pre­dic­tions. This means that limbic regions direct pro­cessing in the brain. They don’t react to stim­u­la­tion from the out­side world. This is ironic, Bar­rett argues, because when sci­en­tists used to believe that limbic regions of the brain were the home of emo­tion, they were seen as mainly reac­tive to the world.Common sense tells you that seeing is believing, but really the brain is built for things to work the other way around: you see (and hear and smell and taste) what you believe. And believing is largely based on feeling. In her paper, Bar­rett shows that your brain is not wired to be a reac­tive organ. It’s 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?” And the sen­sa­tions that seem to matter most are the ones that are inside your own body, which are called “interoceptions.”“What your brain is trying to do is guess what the sen­sa­tion means and what’s causing the sen­sa­tions so it can figure out what to do about them,” Bar­rett said. “Your brain is trying to put together thoughts, feel­ings, and per­cep­tions so they arrive as needed, not a second afterwards.” -- source link

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