Step Into My Sessions: The Predictive Brain - A Book That Might Flip Your Thinking

A big idea I can’t stop thinking about:
the brain is a prediction machine

This week’s Step Into My Sessions looks a little different.

I’ve been reading a book that has me thinking (and re-thinking 🤔) so many of the assumptions we make about behavior, emotion, and social understanding: Autism and the Predictive Brain: Absolute Thinking in a Relative World by Peter Vermeulen.

I’ve admired Peter for years, and I was really impressed by his earlier book, Autism as Context Blindness. He’s smart, refreshingly clear, kindly wrote an endorsement for Movie Time, 📽️ and yes… I always remember him wearing cool socks. 🧦

The premise of this newer book is both simple and mind-bending 🤯: our brains don’t just take in information and react to it. Instead, the brain is constantly predicting what it expects will happen next, and then updating those predictions based on what actually happens. Prediction errors happen when our experience of the world deviates from our expectations (our predictions.)

If your brain relies heavily on context and “probable meanings,” you can tolerate uncertainty and prediction errors pretty easily. You can fill in gaps. You can assume and shrug off ambiguity. 🤷🏼‍♀️ But that same system can also make us more prone to a priori assumptions… and sometimes bias.

If context feels less reliable, less clear, or harder to integrate quickly, the world can feel like it requires more effort to interpret. There can be more prediction errors. There is more VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—and that can create stress. 😟

But here’s where it gets really interesting! 🧐 In striving to correct prediction errors, greater attention to context (maybe requiring much more focus, sometimes at the expense of not processing internal information/sensations) might also lead to fewer expectations and fewer of those a priori assumptions. Accepting people for who they are, not who we want or expect them to be. 🫱🏼‍🫲🏼

As I’m just starting this book, I’m noticing a mix of curiosity and discomfort. 🤔😅 I’m a little wary of what I’m going to learn,and how it might shift what I believe and how I align my practice.

I guess that means I’m growing. And I know that’s a good thing. So, stay tuned… 😊

PS…Anyone else reading this book? If we can get 10 people, let’s do an Office Hours study group discussion! 📖💬

👀 A Noticing Moment…

What idea(s) were you at first wary of because they seemed like they might change how you practice? What did you discover?

Let me know – love to learn about it!