Our Time Travelling Brains
By: Julia Daley
Until March, I didn’t really understand Predictive Processing (also known as Predictive Coding and the Bayesian Brain), or the theory of the brain as a prediction machine. It wasn’t from a lack of effort—I’d been reading and studying about it for years!—but, for whatever reason, none of the disparate lectures I’d watched and books I’d read on Predictive Processing ever really clicked in a way that made intuitive sense to me. It wasn’t until I watched the video that inspired this issue that everything I’d ever learned about Predictive Processing coalesced into a singular “a-ha” moment and I finally got it.
I’ve been a big fan of Kurzgesagt and their work for some time, so it’s my habit to watch each new video they publish. Kurzgesagt is pronounced as /kʊʁt͡sɡəˈzaːkt/, a German word meaning “in a nutshell.” The group started in 2013 as a passion project, but they soon developed a devoted following and established themselves as a media company. Their mission is to “make science and humanism appealing to as many people as possible, regardless of their age or academic background.” Their animated videos are gorgeous to look at and also soothing to listen to, thanks to the narration by Steve Taylor. It’s always such a joy to sit down and learn something new from Kurzgesagt.
With the title “Why Your Brain Blinds You for 2 Hours Every Day,” the video doesn’t seem as if it’d be about Predictive Processing. Not once is the theory mentioned explicitly, yet I quickly realized that I was, indeed, watching the best layperson summary of Predictive Processing I’d ever seen. With Kurzgesagt’s distinct visual style, the video eloquently breaks down the complex mechanics of how the brain simultaneously interprets the past, processes reality, and predicts the future.
The video focuses mainly on the sensory and emotional processes of the Predictive Processing Framework, and it doesn’t go into full depth on all aspects of the theory. However, their annotated works-cited page for the research behind their video is an excellent resource for those who want a deeper exploration; they connect their sources to each major claim made in the video. It’s perhaps worth noting that some important aspects of the theory go unmentioned in the video—mainly those related to learning and prediction errors. Then again, for a theory as complex as Predictive Processing, it’s probably not possible to adequately explain it all in a single ten-minute video.
I finished watching the video and felt exhilarated—finally, I had a solid grasp on this theory I’d been wrestling with for years! As one does, I promptly shared the video with my friends, family, and of course the Think Tank team. More and more BRAIN SIG members were added to the email chain, and before long, seemingly everyone wanted to write something about this Kurzgesagt video—and that’s how this issue was born.
When we first started publishing our magazine, we centered our issues on a pair of videos and asked BRAIN SIG members to write about their reactions. As our readership grew, so too did our circle of writers, as well as our editorial team. Nowadays, we usually have themes in mind and find videos to suit our pre-planned topics. It’s almost nostalgic how this issue came together in the preceding months, following the video-first pattern we once used when we were a smaller publication.
So, please, if you haven’t already, do watch the incredible Predictive Processing video from Kurzgesagt. The video serves as the foundation of this issue, and our other writers will then build upon it—filling in some of the gaps and then going beyond the video to explore how this theory can be applied more broadly in language and education.
And if you’d like a few more fun, brainy videos from Kurzgesagt, here’s a few more I can recommend watching:
This inspiring video on procedural learning, habit formation, and executive function.
This fun video on what intelligence is.
This sweet video that explains the science of loneliness.
This motivating video shares tips for making and keeping friends.
Julia Daley is a senior lecturer and Assessment Coordinator at Hiroshima Bunkyo University, and she received her Masters in TESOL from Northern Arizona University. She has taught English writing and conversation in many classrooms in the US and Japan. She enjoys watching educational videos in her free time.