Forms of prediction in the nervous system

Abstract

The idea that predictions shape how we perceive and comprehend the world has become increasingly influential in the field of systems neuroscience. It also forms an important framework for understanding neuropsychiatric disorders, which are proposed to be the result of disturbances in the mechanisms through which prior information influences perception and belief, leading to the production of suboptimal models of the world. There is a widespread tendency to conceptualize the influence of predictions exclusively in terms of ‘top-down’ processes, whereby predictions generated in higher-level areas exert their influence on lower-level areas within an information processing hierarchy. However, this excludes from consideration the predictive information embedded in the ‘bottom-up’ stream of information processing. We describe evidence for the importance of this distinction and argue that it is critical for the development of the predictive processing framework and, ultimately, for an understanding of the perturbations that drive the emergence of neuropsychiatric symptoms and experiences.