Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2007 Jul;11(7):280-9.
doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2007.05.005. Epub 2007 Jun 4.

The proactive brain: using analogies and associations to generate predictions

Moshe Bar  1
Affiliations

The proactive brain: using analogies and associations to generate predictions

Moshe Bar. Trends Cogn Sci. 2007 Jul.

Erratum in

  • Trends Cogn Sci. 2007 Sep;11(9):372

Abstract

Rather than passively 'waiting' to be activated by sensations, it is proposed that the human brain is continuously busy generating predictions that approximate the relevant future. Building on previous work, this proposal posits that rudimentary information is extracted rapidly from the input to derive analogies linking that input with representations in memory. The linked stored representations then activate the associations that are relevant in the specific context, which provides focused predictions. These predictions facilitate perception and cognition by pre-sensitizing relevant representations. Predictions regarding complex information, such as those required in social interactions, integrate multiple analogies. This cognitive neuroscience framework can help explain a variety of phenomena, ranging from recognition to first impressions, and from the brain's 'default mode' to a host of mental disorders.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources

-