full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains

Unscramble the Blue Letters


And so it turns out we're so stereotypical, our brains have got dideaectd neural circuitry to decode this stereotyping. So if I take some dots and set them in motion with biological motion, your brain's circuitry would uendsnatrd inntstlay what's going on. Now this is a bunch of dots moving. You will know what this person is doing, whether hppay, sad, old, young — a huge amount of information. If these dots were cars going on a racing circuit, you would have abeloulsty no idea what's going on.

So why is it that we move the particular ways we do? Well let's think about what really happens. Maybe we don't all quite move the same way. Maybe there's variation in the population. And maybe those who move better than others have got more cchnae of getting their children into the next generation. So in evolutionary slaces, movements get better. And perhaps in life, movements get better through learning.

Open Cloze


And so it turns out we're so stereotypical, our brains have got _________ neural circuitry to decode this stereotyping. So if I take some dots and set them in motion with biological motion, your brain's circuitry would __________ _________ what's going on. Now this is a bunch of dots moving. You will know what this person is doing, whether _____, sad, old, young — a huge amount of information. If these dots were cars going on a racing circuit, you would have __________ no idea what's going on.

So why is it that we move the particular ways we do? Well let's think about what really happens. Maybe we don't all quite move the same way. Maybe there's variation in the population. And maybe those who move better than others have got more ______ of getting their children into the next generation. So in evolutionary ______, movements get better. And perhaps in life, movements get better through learning.

Solution


  1. instantly
  2. understand
  3. scales
  4. absolutely
  5. chance
  6. happy
  7. dedicated

Original Text


And so it turns out we're so stereotypical, our brains have got dedicated neural circuitry to decode this stereotyping. So if I take some dots and set them in motion with biological motion, your brain's circuitry would understand instantly what's going on. Now this is a bunch of dots moving. You will know what this person is doing, whether happy, sad, old, young — a huge amount of information. If these dots were cars going on a racing circuit, you would have absolutely no idea what's going on.

So why is it that we move the particular ways we do? Well let's think about what really happens. Maybe we don't all quite move the same way. Maybe there's variation in the population. And maybe those who move better than others have got more chance of getting their children into the next generation. So in evolutionary scales, movements get better. And perhaps in life, movements get better through learning.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
sensory feedback 6
sensory input 3
sensory consequences 3
movement system 3
huge amount 3
hard problem 2
deep blue 2
top problem 2
world record 2
cup stacking 2
control movement 2
extremely noisy 2
negative consequences 2
bayesian decision 2
decision theory 2
brain deals 2
fundamental idea 2
bayesian inference 2
prior knowledge 2
sensory evidence 2
sensory apparatus 2
movement command 2
external events 2
time delay 2
tempo causality 2
force transfuser 2
noisy version 2
effect movement 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
bayesian decision theory 2

Important Words


  1. absolutely
  2. amount
  3. biological
  4. brains
  5. bunch
  6. cars
  7. chance
  8. children
  9. circuit
  10. circuitry
  11. decode
  12. dedicated
  13. dots
  14. evolutionary
  15. generation
  16. happy
  17. huge
  18. idea
  19. information
  20. instantly
  21. learning
  22. life
  23. motion
  24. move
  25. movements
  26. moving
  27. neural
  28. person
  29. population
  30. racing
  31. sad
  32. scales
  33. set
  34. stereotypical
  35. stereotyping
  36. turns
  37. understand
  38. variation
  39. ways
  40. young