Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Neuron. 2013 Sep 4;79(5):836-48. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2013.08.020.
Predictive coding posits that neural systems make forward-looking predictions about incoming information. Neural signals contain information not about the currently perceived stimulus, but about the difference between the observed and the predicted stimulus. We propose to extend the predictive coding framework from high-level sensory processing to the more abstract domain of theory of mind; that is, to inferences about others' goals, thoughts, and personalities. We review evidence that, across brain regions, neural responses to depictions of human behavior, from biological motion to trait descriptions, exhibit a key signature of predictive coding: reduced activity to predictable stimuli. We discuss how future experiments could distinguish predictive coding from alternative explanations of this response profile. This framework may provide an important new window on the neural computations underlying theory of mind.
预测编码假设，神经系统会对即将到来的信息做出前瞻性预测。神经信号包含的信息不是关于当前感知到的刺激，而是关于观察到的刺激与预测刺激之间的差异。我们建议将预测编码框架从高级感觉处理扩展到心理理论的更抽象领域；也就是说，扩展到关于他人的目标、思想和个性的推理。我们回顾了证据，表明在大脑区域中，对人类行为的描述，从生物运动到特征描述，神经反应表现出预测编码的一个关键特征：对可预测的刺激的活动减少。我们讨论了未来的实验如何将预测编码与这种反应模式的替代解释区分开来。该框架可能为心理理论背后的神经计算提供一个重要的新视角。
