Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science

Brains, it has recently been argued, are essentially prediction machines. They are bundles of cells that support perception and action by constantly attempting to match incoming sensory inputs with top-down expectations or predictions. This is achieved using a hierarchical generative model that aims to minimize prediction error within a bidirectional cascade of cortical processing. Such accounts offer a unifying model of perception and action, illuminate the functional role of attention, and may neatly capture the special contribution of cortical processing to adaptive success. This target article critically examines this "hierarchical prediction machine" approach, concluding that it offers the best clue yet…

• UO
  University of Oxford
• UO
  University of Edinburgh
• RB
  Ruhr-Universität Bochum
• SO
  School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh