Prediction Error Minimization and Implications


slowimages This is the final of three posts on this subject. It reflects the work of Jakob Hohwy as referenced in the post Explaining Away and an interview in connection with his book: The Predictive Mind.




hohwybinUntitledFigure 5 is from “Predictive coding explains binocular rivalry: an epistemological review.”

According to Hohwy, the messages that are passed around in the hierarchy are the sufficient statistics:  predictions and prediction errors concerning (1) the means of probability distributions associated with various sensory attributes or causes of sensory input out there in the world, and (2) the precisions (the inverse of variance) of those distributions. Hohwy suggests that the brain uses the normal (Gaussian) distribution. The hierarchy gives a deep and varied prediction error landscape, where prior probabilities are “empirical” in that they are learned and pulled down from higher levels, so they do not have to be extracted brand new from the current input. This reliance on higher levels means that processing at one level depends on processing at higher levels.

Different causal regularities in nature, working at different time scales, influence each other and thereby create non-linearities in the sensory input. Without such interactions, sensory input would be linear and fairly easy to predict both in detail and far into the future. So the temporal organization of the hierarchy reflects the causal order of the environment as well as the way the causes in the world interact with each other to produce the flow of sensory input that brains try to predict. Hohwy suggests that we make second order predictions or hypotheses about the accuracy of the input that comes from a noisy, uncertain non-linear world.

The brain actively changes itself and actively seeks out expected sensory input in an attempt to minimize prediction error. This means the brain seeks to expose itself to input that it can explain away. Attention through consciousness might be a way that the brain seeks input for testing certain hypotheses.








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