Backwards is the way forward: feedback in the cortical hierarchy predicts the expected future

Clark offers a powerful description of the brain as a prediction machine, which offers progress on two distinct levels. First, on an abstract conceptual level, it provides a unifying framework for perception, action, and cognition (including subdivisions such as attention, expectation, and imagination). Second, hierarchical prediction offers progress on a concrete descriptive level for testing and constraining conceptual elements and mechanisms of predictive coding models (estimation of predictions, prediction errors, and internal models)

Attention is more than prediction precision [Commentary on target article]

A cornerstone of the target article is that, in a predictive coding framework, attention can be modelled by weighting prediction error with a measure of precision. We argue that this is not a complete explanation, especially in the light of ERP (event-related potentials) data showing large evoked responses for frequently presented target stimuli, which thus are predicted

Enactive Cinema: Simulatorium Eisensteinense

The dissertation at hand explores the very grounds, within which the phenomenon of cinema emerges. It is a study of the intrinsic dynamics of cinema author’s mind in the process of creating moving image. Alas, it is not a historical, cultural, or ideological study into the handicraft, the narrative genres, or technological developments of cinema. Instead, it discusses possible foundations of cinema in the human nature, as seems viable in the light of the contemporary biological and psychological constraints. The dissertation is set to define a kind of cinema, which reflects the recent scientific knowledge about neural underpinnings of human activity, and which draws its emotional power from one’s experimental resources of understanding and interacting with others within the everyday world. While attribute of ‘enactive’ carries the explicit sense of pragmatic doing and meaningful acting in the world, it is the embodied simulation of the world, which will provide the cognitive environment for creative enactment. Emotions, in addition to determining unconscious, involuntary understanding about the state of things, also determine all conscious, intentional, and imaginative aspects of cognition. Faithful to the spirit of Eisenstein the dissertation deliberately deviates from other mainstream cinema research: instead of the spectator, the focus here is on the author’s cognitive processes

Characterising the role of the ascending arousal system in facilitating global brain dynamics in health and neurodegeneration

The inherent complexity of the brain can be attributed to countless interacting parts, from microcircuit detail scaled to large oscillatory fluctuations of macroscopic activity. One such structure that has previously been shown to influence dynamic macroscopic fluctuations in brain activity is the ascending arousal system. The ascending arousal system is comprised of multiple nuclei that send diffuse and broad-reaching neuromodulatory inputs across the brain – a function proposed to facilitate global brain activity changes. However, little is known about the exact mechanisms or extent of the influence of the ascending arousal system in facilitating large-scale brain dynamics. Hence, this thesis attempts to reveal the role of the underlying ascending arousal system in facilitating global brain dynamics that are critical for brain function. Specifically, this thesis unpacks the importance of considering the interactions between the cholinergic and noradrenergic system in facilitating global brain state dynamics. We reveal that the structural connections between the noradrenergic and cholinergic systems are critical in constraining global brain-state dynamics. We show a causal role of the cholinergic system in facilitating global brain-state dynamics and demonstrate a microcircuit mechanism of global brain-state dynamics. Next, we discuss the importance of viewing the brain through the lens of a complex system to understand both its function and dysfunction across neurodegenerative diseases. Then, we establish a maladaptive mechanism of the noradrenergic system in the manifestation of freezing of gait in Parkinson’s disease. Lastly, we examine the role of the noradrenergic system in other symptom manifestations in Parkinson’s disease. Ultimately, this thesis characterises the interactions of the cholinergic and noradrenergic systems in facilitating global brain-state dynamics in both healthy and diseased brains