Thoughts: Brain-Wide Model of Predictive Processing
It is known that things are known by the brain, but how?
How is it known that this is a screen, or that’s wood, shoe, plastic and so on? How do things surpass being sensed to being known? Why do external circumstances affect feelings? When a reaction follows a feeling, how is it known that this reaction is happening?
What phenomenon does the brain use to understand and relate to the world, and why is it potent?
Neuroscience says predictive coding — where the brain keeps making guesses on what to do or what next would happen. This is similar to perceptual prediction — with an expectation of what to sense.
However, can anything be predicted if it is unknown? The process of prediction may seem automatic, but the content is always something known.
Changes in the cloud could mean it might rain because changes in the cloud in the past led to rain. Expecting pain before an injection is to know that injection is painful and to ‘hold active thoughts’ in readiness for it. From childhood, knowledge acquisition began and continued with adjustments. It is things known and their concatenation that determines what to predict or expect.
So the conclusion that the brain creates a model of the world, or that it has an internal model to guess the external model, then with update — just like that, is inaccurate.
One of the biggest questions in science is consciousness, which is what it means to be and to know.
Whatever it means, say for mammals, to be and to know is secondary to how any mammal knows whatever it knows.
Knowing is the memory. When descriptions say the brain predicts or expects, it is a function of what is known, which is of the memory.
Anything predicted, exact or not, by the memory, in any situation, that was not known, is beyond the scope of science.
However, in what uniform assemblage does the memory hold things of different types: time, objects, people, distance, words, pictures, mirror images, books, internal sense — or interoception and so on? Since the memory does not experience these by itself.
Did they become uniform in the memory, or before they got there?
Memories are colloquially used to mean recalling things of the past, but the memory holds much more than what is called memories.
Still, how does the brain know anything?
In psychology, cognitive behavioral therapy is the standard. It is based on what is called the cognitive model. Its sections are thoughts, feelings and behavior, skipping the role of the memory. It says when something happened — an individual started having all these thoughts.
Being therapy, the goal is therapy, but unanswered questions about how external circumstances become thoughts could be responsible for some of the cases therapy failed.
How did thoughts lead to feelings? How did the thoughts get interpreted or known? What is the locational difference between feelings and thoughts, not just the vague placements of the model?
Thoughts are motion. Feelings are destination. In any feeling — sad or happy, there can be many thoughts. Feeling good or bad could taper other things that may have felt a certain way. Sadness could make the best meal or possession feel like nothing — showing that feelings are graduated.
Two key questions still, how does the memory know about the world?
What rules do thoughts and feelings follow in the brain?
Theoretically, everything is converted to thought. This is the postulation in thoughts: rules of its cells.
It is known that all senses converge or there’s multisensory integration, the postulation says it is predicated on thoughts.
The reason smell can bring thoughts of the past is because when the smell was perceived, that smell and things around, at the time, were converted to thoughts. They proceeded to be stored — then grouped together — in the memory.
So the next time the smell was perceived, the memory gave thoughts of what the smell is and other things around the time of that smell — from before. This is a reason it is said that smell brings memories.
This is similar to taste, touch, sight and hear. The name of someone else may be heard, then the memory gives another with that name and what the person was about. Name or anything else becomes thought. The thoughts are stored and grouped in the memory.
There is physical reality of anything, clothes, chair, table, pen and so on. This physical reality is converted to thought reality. It is the thought state of things that the brain uses to understand and relate with the world. The cup, table and chair are thoughts to the memory. Or the memory bears a thought version of those, determining use and caution.
Language is an external or common reality that becomes thought, known by the memory and used in communication.
A way to understand why mammals mostly don’t understand human language is because that kind of communication is not converted to thought for them, so it does not become what their memory can use — and does not give feelings, even if the most obscene things are said to them.
Though they sense screaming, signs and certain words — if they have heard it before, or stored and grouped in their memory, but in general they don’t have ports that convert human language to thoughts.
What is called memory loss in dementia may not just be that the cup is no longer stored in the memory, or that the chair is not stored in a way to be known as a seat, but that some sensory inputs were not converted to thought — or there’s breakage between physical to thought reality.
The cup was not converted, so what it is in physical reality becomes nothing to thought, making it disregarded or misapplied. So, while memory loss is a concern, what happens before the memory is also a problem in dementia.
Often, anything can be known, but not remembered except reminded. So not remembered does not mean not stored. But to access the store, a converted thought has to go to the memory for it to give from its store, or group. In dementia, tea cup or anything could be stored, but when seen, does not get converted to thought and goes nowhere.
Theoretically too, the memory knows about digestion, circulation, respiration and so on, with their parts having stores and grouped by similarity, co-occurrence and so forth.
Whenever a digestion problem brings bad feelings, it is because it was converted to thought. The deficient thought went to its store in the memory, hit and expanded the store, before proceeding to a place of bad feelings. The swollen store affects other stores and groups around and may result in faster heart rate, breathing and so on.
When a personal bad news is heard, it becomes a thought, goes to its memory store and may follow a similar process. This explains lots of psychosomatic or psychogenic situations. Thought, theoretically, is constant in the psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrine bidirectional communication.
Through thoughts, the memory is the center stage of neuroplasticity — the concept that the brain changes with function.
In the postulation, neuroplasticity is mostly a grouping and regrouping process of memory stores. Brain — or more appropriately, memory — changes can be the store of something, grouped newly with other stores in usage, adjustment, duration, and so on.
When it is said that memory is stored in different parts of the brain, this, theoretically, could mean group locations determine where stores belong, since groups are often points of access before stores.
Feelings from converted thoughts are responsible for the intensity of chronic pain, so certain meds are not just to taper the worse feeling, but to bring the best feeling.
There are verticals where feelings are determined — best, worse, sweet and regular. Thoughts face these verticals determining excitement, happiness, anger, sadness, and so on. There is an outlet area by the verticals, determining reactions, like smile, frown and so on.
Addiction is often addictive because some memory stores are accessed, regrouped and feelings bring best, or sometimes changes from the accumulation spot of sadness or worries.
Sleep is when the entry port of some senses close, and the sleep vertical presents. Lack of sleep or good rest could result from incompleteness of one or both.
There is thought-thought reality: imagination, dreams and so on. So something known but not being externally experienced and could defy reality in the thought space. The pen can be used as a washing machine or the bag as a ventilation system, or anything like that.
Thought-thought reality can bring good feelings, or bad — if there is prediction on what might follow if something happens.
With thought-thought reality, anything goes, but with physical-thought reality, or common to thought reality, there is a general acceptance that the pen is not a washing machine and so on.
Whenever common reality is denied, it takes feelings to a spot of shame, or dejection, which is often unwanted. So, when physical reality is not externally enforced by others, feelings — internally — enforce common reality.
There are a number of psychiatry conditions where the affected are disconnected from this physical to thought reality, and their feelings don’t go to the spot of shame. Their feelings verticals become broken, jumbling what should be felt as happy, sad, bad smell, then disarranging reactions, laughter, tears, leaving and so on. Their feelings destination, which should primarily enforce common reality, fizzles.
The memory has stores and these are grouped. This is similar to what Ivan Pavlov found with associative learning, where one thing links to another.
Also, BF Skinner developed learning and reward, which is what this postulation describes as giving the best feeling vertical in certain situations.
Theoretically, how we know what we know is because everything gets converted to thoughts. It is the thought version that determines ownership, caution, and so on. Whatever is predicted is in form of a thought. Thought or its form is the core of being for all organisms.
Thoughts continue predictions — automatic or not. Thoughts or their kind is what the memory holds. If anything is thought about, or can be thought about, it first became a thought. Thoughts, active or passive, are the leading activity of neuronal firings. Emotions are a section of feelings. Thoughts are beyond inner voice, other voice, reading voice, thinking and so on.
Thought is mostly the mind half of the mind-body problem. A reason physical or external activities can interfere with thoughts is because the physical activity was converted to thought and became active, alternating with the intrusive thought.
Also, a reason feelings weaken is because senses become thoughts. Any of the converted thought could be enough to bring its own feelings, extricating the dominant feeling.
Summarily, anything sensed (heard, seen, smelled, tasted, or touched), that becomes known, was converted to thought and went to the memory. Sensory is not enough. Knowing, feeling and reaction are the completion.
The process is rapid, but sequential. Words in a language not understood would not hurt. This says that memory precedes feelings. All the memory knows are uniformly held in the form of thought.
If things are not converted to thought, they are either converted to something that blends with thought or converted to something that becomes thought, or they are simply converted to thought.
