The predicting brain
psychoanalysis and repeating the past in the present
pp. 193-217
in: Mauro Mancia (ed), Psychoanalysis and neuroscience, Berlin, Springer, 2006Abstract
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and, according to neuroscience,... so is everything else! In other words, reality is subjective. This is because the brain constructs our experience of events, people, objects, as well as our emotional and behavioral responses to them [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. From a subjective perspective, as events occur, we perceive them and then react to them. From the perspective of the brain, even before events happen, the brain nonconsciously makes a prediction about what is most likely to occur, and starts to construct the perceptions, behaviors, emotions, and physiologic responses that best fit with what is predicted. Predictions evolved as short cuts, to enhance adaptive functioning [4, 7]. Predictive mechanisms prepare us ahead of time, so that we are able to respond more smoothly, efficiently and rapidly once an event does occur. This makes sense from the evolutionary standpoint. In the competition for scare resources, animals "prepared" and able to react more quickly are more likely to survive and pass on their genes to their progeny.