Like the superhero Doctor Strange in the movie Avengers – Infinity War, which saw 14 billion possibilities for the outcome of the same story, the human brain is all the time trying to predict what will to happen. The discovery emerged in a scientific study published in the journal PNAS. Understand this mechanism better.
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The brain is always trying to predict the future.
Our brain is constantly trying to guess what the next word will be, for example, whether while reading a book or watching a lecture. We really have this habit of trying to predict things, however this may not be beneficial, as it leads us to think that bad things can happen, although they do not.
A group of researchers from France carried out a study in order to analyze and quantify the brain predictions made when individuals listened to audiobooks. Data collection was carried out through a deep neural network that is capable of making brain recordings.
Study results
According to the work, the brain creates detailed statistical possibilities for each word or sound we hear, so it ends up being extremely sensitive to the degree of unpredictability. In other words, the brain response is always stronger when we hear an unexpected word for a given context.
Does the brain act like recognition software?
According to scientists, the way the brain works is similar to speech recognition software or the automatic completion of smartphones. However, brain predictions include not only words but also specific sounds or sounds of unknown meaning.
Can the brain act as an enemy?
If we stop to analyze the study's findings, in a way, it is possible to say that the brain often assumes the role of its worst enemy, since it tries to anticipate everything. And that includes bad things!
One of the main mental health problems today is anxiety. This work shows that we can always be worried about anything for nothing, since we are prone to it. Consequently threat detection mechanisms, which in turn cause stress and even more anxiety, can be triggered.
