The brain's OS is the scientific method

[Cain]

http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/documentation/pressReleases/2010/pressRelease201003101/index.html

It turns out that there is a striking similarity between how the human brain determines what is going on in the outside world and the job of scientists. Good science involves formulating a hypothesis and testing whether this hypothesis is compatible with the scientist's observations. Researchers in the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt together with the University of Glasgow have shown that this is what the brain does as well. A study shows that it takes less effort for the brain to register predictable as compared to unpredictable images. (Journal of Neuroscience, February 24th, 2010)

Alink and colleagues based this conclusion on the characteristics of responses in the primary visual cortex. It is known that the primary visual cortex is critical for vision and that responses in this brain area create a map of what we are currently looking at. Alink and colleagues, however, for the first time show that images induce smaller responses in this area when they are predictable. The implication of this finding is that the brain does not just sit and wait for visual signals to arrive. Instead, it actively tries to predict these signals and when it is right it is rewarded by being able to respond more efficiently. If it is wrong, massive responses are required to find out why it is wrong and to come up with better predictions.

One implication of this study is that when you enter the office the image of your colleague at his desk, who has the annoying trait of always being there before you, will require very little effort for your brain to register. The image of your mother in law sitting on the same chair, however, would make your brain go haywire. Not necessarily because you are not fond of this person but because this image makes it clear to your brain that it is doing a lousy job at predicting what is going to happen next and that it will have to make an effort to improve its predictions. This suggests that the brain's main job, alike that of a scientist, is to generate hypotheses about what is going on in the outside world.

The study represents a significant advance in understanding how the brain supports visual perception. An important implication of this study is that visual perception depends on an active generation of predictions. This stands in contrast to the classical view that visual perception mainly results from a more passive cascade of responses to visual signals spreading through the brain.

Further research is still required to determine whether indeed we are all carrying along a little scientist in our head. At present the idea of the scientific brain is rapidly spreading through the neuroscience community and provides a novel approach to resolving how the most complex organ of the human body works.

It'd be very interesting to see whether this is merely restricted to the visual cortex or whether it holds true for other parts of the brain as well.

[Kai]

This is very interesting.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Wasn't this part of On Intelligence?

[Reginald Ret]

Nice,
might be biased though.
if a scientist says that everyone basically thinks like he does but doesn't know it...
is kinda like saying 'despite our outward appearance we are all white inside.'

[Template]

Nice,
might be biased though.
if a scientist says that everyone basically thinks like he does but doesn't know it...
is kinda like saying 'despite our outward appearance we are all white inside.'

Yeah.  It's only one aspect of the brain's function, moreover.  For one thing, practically no one scientist does all the jobs described at once, if it's even possible in a career:  there's a lot of monitoring of the same inputs, while developing exciting new hypotheses, ..., etc.

In any case, it's more that some walk, some dance, and some are gymnasts.  The scientist might embody the archetype of "learning about the world".  More likely they at best seek to embody that archetype.

I'm suggesting that science as a discipline is a formalized practice that reflects and reinforces a natural or intuitive faculty of the human mind.

[Golden Applesauce]

I don't see how "we're all scientists inside" follows from "the visual cortex attempts to predict stimuli before they happen."  In particular, experiments like the Wason selection task would indicate that the "people only act like scientists under some situations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task

[Captain Utopia]

True, it seems like the article is overreaching.  That said, it is possible that low-level pattern recognition works in that way all through the brain, yet higher-level cognition need not work in the same way.  Or, the same mechanism could be layered such that each layer operates independently on the same predict/match/pass or panic model, but when evaluated at a higher-level it need not be logically consistent outside of its domain, taking into account more data than was given to the otherwise "scientific" layer?