Predictive Thinking: How Your Brain Predicts the Future
Watch the recording of my public lecture hosted by Prof. Moritz Grosse-Wentrup and the Vienna Cognitive Science Hub.
Predictive Thinking: How Your Brain Predicts the Future, Recording from 22 October 2024, 18:30, Hörsaal 1, University of Vienna.
According to the brain, it is the most fascinating organ in the universe. Despite all we have learned, we’re still far from fully understanding how it works, how it shapes our reality, and fuels both joy and sorrow. Yet, a groundbreaking new theory is capturing the attention of researchers worldwide. In this talk, I will gently introduce you to the Predictive Processing theory and Karl Friston’s Free Energy Principle – concepts that could transform the way we understand the brain and our everyday experiences. It turns out, thinking might not be what you think.
Of hidden springs and endless oceans
I presented my latest preprint on minimal phenomenal experience (MPE) at Models of Consciousness meeting in Bamberg.
Models of Consciousness 2024, University of Bamberg, 30 September – 4 October, 2024
In the wake of the active inference framework two popular theories of consciousness highlight the relevance of insular cortex for interoceptive self modeling [Seth, 2021] and subcortical brain regions for qualitative experience [Solms, 2021]. Both provide a compelling ecological argument for integrated conscious experience, i.e., self organization of complex organisms with different parallel and hard to reconcile optimization goals. Computationally, both theories require some kind of self model as basis, which could contradict credible reports of MPE [Metzinger, 2024]. However, duality of conscious experience could be explained by a neuroscientific theory of two distinct brain networks emerging from different evolutionary history, leading to marked differences in cytoarchitecture and function [Sanides, 1962, Luu, Tucker, Friston, 2024]. Speculatively, System-I, originating from an olfactory system and amygdala-centered expansion gradient towards ventro/medial cortex, could enable interoceptive self modeling for everyday, habitual interactions with the body and the world. System-II, hippocampus-centered towards dorso/lateral cortex, could enable less egocentric forms of cognition and experience. In this sense, MPE could be a less salient/habitual form of experience, when neither interoceptive/exteroceptive prediction errors nor spontaneous episodic memory reactivation provide self-referential engagement of System-I. System-II, if not operating on content, could give rise to self-less experience of the world as such.
Link to the recording | Link to my slides | Link to my preprint
Can we self-regulate amygdala activity?
Yes! In the fMRI neurofeedback study I did in Zürich, we were able to show that people can voluntarily up- or down-regulate their amygdala. Our special twist was that we used emotional faces as feedback instead of barcharts to display the amygdala activation intensity.
In this study we asked our participants to make fearful faces less fearful or neutral faces more happy, which we presented to them while lying in our MRI scanner. We used the intensity of their amygdala activation to scale the intensity of the emotions displayed. This feasibility study worked in our healthy study population. Apurva Watve, the first author of this study, is now testing this method in people with major depression to see if it can improve their symptoms. Emotional faces could be more intuitive and naturalistic than abstract charts. We are social beings, after all.
Facing emotions: real-time fMRI-based neurofeedback using dynamic emotional faces to modulate amygdala activity
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2023.1286665/full
@orf1 – Das Wunder Du
An active inference perspective for the amygdala complex
Maybe the amygdala is not angry or sad or afraid – it’s just misunderstood!
More than 10 years I’ve been wondering how to link my amygdala research with predictive processing. With the invaluable help from my interdisciplinary colleagues and friends it worked out: a bit inspiration, hard work, and letting go of unnecessary clutter.
We want to inspire amygdala research by suggesting a unified narrative grounded in biological fundamentals (self-regulation) and a computational framework (Bayes). By proposing an active inference perspective, we reframe previously fragmented amygdala research topics:
1. Fear/anxeity: we see the amygdala as a mediator between interoception and exteroception. The central amygdala acts as a Bayesian regulator to inform affective states. It sends predictions to the basolateral amygdala, which allows efficient perception.
2. Danger detection: how do we distinguish a snake from a rope? The context matters: if you are afraid of encountering snakes (e.g., because you’re in the jungle) you are more likely to (mis)identify a snaky object as a snake. Not so much on a relaxing sailing cruise.
3. Fear conditioning: results from predictive processing and anticipating the future. Using exteroception the amygdala helps to predict deviations from optimal regulation (e.g., pain) before they happen. I call this a pro gamer move if you want to survive.
4. Actions: some sensations feel better than others. Approach and avoidance actions can make more preferred expected sensations become reality. It’s like magic. If it hurts in a bad way and you avoid it before it hurts, it does not hurt.
@orf1 – okidoki
How does the brain work? A little bit on neurons, synaptic plasticity, and why sleep is important – and dreams can be straaaange…
In amygdala we trust
I wrote an article for the nature portfolio blog about our new amygdala paper. You can read how breaking apart the almond-shaped amygdala into its subnuclei helped us to find out more about how people learn to distinguish between trust makers and trust breakers.
Blog Post | Paper summary on twitter | Open Access Journal Article
@orf1 – Fanny’s Friday Doku
Susanne Kainberger and the Fanny’s Friday team invited me to do a feature show on fear and anxiety together with the psychotherapist Renée Fellmann-Pozdena, the neuroscientists Daniela Pollak-Monje Quiroga (MedUni Wien) and Wulf Haubensak (IMP Wien), as well as Manuel Rubey (actor, comedian) and Bernhard Egger (musician, youtube host).
If you missed it, there was also a front page news article on orf.at.
Vienna Cognitive Science Hub: Predictive Processing Symposium
The Vienna Cognitive Science Hub invited me to do an intro lecture on Predictive Processing, moderate the Q&A session with Karl Friston and to host their panel discussion with Karl Friston (University College London),
Naoshige Uchida (Harvard University), Isabella Sarto-Jackson (Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research), Moritz Grosse-Wentrup (University of Vienna), and Manuel Zimmer (University of Vienna).
Predictive Processing and the Free Energy Principle?! Count me in!
Please find all the exciting talks on the symposium’s website.