Detailed expectations about the world – in other words, what the brain “guesses” will be out there – are being transmitted by the visual cortex to the thalamus. The thalamus then compares what’s coming in from the eyes. If that matches the expectations (“when I turn my head I should see a chair there”), then very little activity goes back to the visual system. The thalamus simply reports on differences between what the eyes are reporting, and what the brain’s internal model has predicted. In other words, what gets sent back to the visual cortex is what fell short in the expectation (also known
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