If your brain predicts perfectly—say, you predicted a McIntosh apple as you came upon a display of them—then the actual visual input of the apple, captured by your retina, carries no new information beyond the prediction. The visual input merely confirms the prediction is correct, so the input needn’t travel any further in the brain. The neurons in your visual cortex are already firing as they should be. This efficient, predictive process is your brain’s default way of navigating the world and making sense of it. It generates predictions to perceive and explain everything you see, hear, taste,
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