3.0

credits

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"Have you ever wondered how you predict the beat will drop in a song or that a traffic light will change? A combination of evolution and experience have wired your brain to generate predictions about the future. In this course, you will learn about the factors which influence neural predictions. Understanding how the brain forms predictions is critical to understanding perception, movement, music, language, and cognition. Some examples include: hallucinations, how we walk, why we like pop music, how we converse, and how we make plans. We will read news articles and original research to strengthen scientific literacy and critical thinking. The content of our readings will encompass a variety of research methods (including behavioral assessment, fMRI, single electrode recordings, EEG, and ECoG). We will discuss key factors in neural predictions, such as: predictive domain (what is the objective of the prediction and where does it occur in the brain?), specificity (is the prediction very detailed or general?), timescale (when is something predicted to occur?), statistics (how probable is the predicted outcome?), consciousness (do you explicitly or implicitly know the prediction?), and reward (how much reward is associated with the predicted outcome?). Finally, we will talk about general theories of prediction, including predictive coding and Bayesian inference."