full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Anil Seth: How your brain invents your "self"

Unscramble the Blue Letters


DB: The brain clearly has a good eitodr. You call us, people, "feeling machines" in your book. Care to expand on that?

AS: Yeah, that's right. Well, we're not cognitive cremuotps, we are feeling machines. And I think this is true at the leevl of making decisions, but for me, it's really at the herat of how to urtsdanend life, mind and ceconnissusos. And this, really, is the idea that -- In consciousness science, we tended to think things like vision -- viison as being the royal road to understanding consciousness. Vision is easy to study, and we're very vausil ctarreeus. But fundamentally, brains evolved and deovelp and operate from menomt to moment to keep the body alive, always in light of this deep physiological imperative to help the organism persist in remaining an organism, in remaining alive. And that fundamental role of brains, that's what, in my view, gave rise to any kind of perception. In order to regulate something, you need to be able to predict what happens to it. It's this whole apparatus of prediction and prediction error that ueringrdds all of our perceptual experiences, including the self, has its origin in this role that's tightly coupled to the physiology of the body. And that's why, I think, we're feeling machines, we're not just computers that happen to be implemented on meat machines.

Open Cloze


DB: The brain clearly has a good ______. You call us, people, "feeling machines" in your book. Care to expand on that?

AS: Yeah, that's right. Well, we're not cognitive _________, we are feeling machines. And I think this is true at the _____ of making decisions, but for me, it's really at the _____ of how to __________ life, mind and _____________. And this, really, is the idea that -- In consciousness science, we tended to think things like vision -- ______ as being the royal road to understanding consciousness. Vision is easy to study, and we're very ______ _________. But fundamentally, brains evolved and _______ and operate from ______ to moment to keep the body alive, always in light of this deep physiological imperative to help the organism persist in remaining an organism, in remaining alive. And that fundamental role of brains, that's what, in my view, gave rise to any kind of perception. In order to regulate something, you need to be able to predict what happens to it. It's this whole apparatus of prediction and prediction error that __________ all of our perceptual experiences, including the self, has its origin in this role that's tightly coupled to the physiology of the body. And that's why, I think, we're feeling machines, we're not just computers that happen to be implemented on meat machines.

Solution


  1. vision
  2. heart
  3. undergirds
  4. understand
  5. develop
  6. consciousness
  7. editor
  8. moment
  9. computers
  10. level
  11. creatures
  12. visual

Original Text


DB: The brain clearly has a good editor. You call us, people, "feeling machines" in your book. Care to expand on that?

AS: Yeah, that's right. Well, we're not cognitive computers, we are feeling machines. And I think this is true at the level of making decisions, but for me, it's really at the heart of how to understand life, mind and consciousness. And this, really, is the idea that -- In consciousness science, we tended to think things like vision -- Vision as being the royal road to understanding consciousness. Vision is easy to study, and we're very visual creatures. But fundamentally, brains evolved and develop and operate from moment to moment to keep the body alive, always in light of this deep physiological imperative to help the organism persist in remaining an organism, in remaining alive. And that fundamental role of brains, that's what, in my view, gave rise to any kind of perception. In order to regulate something, you need to be able to predict what happens to it. It's this whole apparatus of prediction and prediction error that undergirds all of our perceptual experiences, including the self, has its origin in this role that's tightly coupled to the physiology of the body. And that's why, I think, we're feeling machines, we're not just computers that happen to be implemented on meat machines.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
coffee cup 3
sensory signals 3
perceptual experience 3
transparent windows 2
real world 2
red coffee 2
color red 2
prediction error 2
continuous stream 2


Important Words


  1. alive
  2. apparatus
  3. body
  4. book
  5. brain
  6. brains
  7. call
  8. care
  9. cognitive
  10. computers
  11. consciousness
  12. coupled
  13. creatures
  14. decisions
  15. deep
  16. develop
  17. easy
  18. editor
  19. error
  20. evolved
  21. expand
  22. experiences
  23. feeling
  24. fundamental
  25. fundamentally
  26. gave
  27. good
  28. happen
  29. heart
  30. idea
  31. imperative
  32. implemented
  33. including
  34. kind
  35. level
  36. life
  37. light
  38. machines
  39. making
  40. meat
  41. mind
  42. moment
  43. operate
  44. order
  45. organism
  46. origin
  47. people
  48. perception
  49. perceptual
  50. persist
  51. physiological
  52. physiology
  53. predict
  54. prediction
  55. regulate
  56. remaining
  57. rise
  58. road
  59. role
  60. royal
  61. science
  62. study
  63. tended
  64. tightly
  65. true
  66. undergirds
  67. understand
  68. understanding
  69. view
  70. vision
  71. visual
  72. yeah