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www.sciencedaily.com 2015 08304.txt.txt

#Epicenter of brain's predictive ability pinpointed by scientists Now, Uni ver sity Dis tin guished Pro fessor Lisa Feldman Bar rett at North eastern has reported finding the epi center of those predictions. Array"The unique con tri bu tion of our paper is to show that limbic tissue, because of its struc ture and the way the neu rons are orga nized, is pre dicting, "Bar rett said.""It is directing the pre dic tions to every where else in the cortex, and that makes it very powerful.""For example, when a person is instructed to imagine a red apple in his or her mind's eye, Bar rett explained that limbic parts of the brain send pre dic tions to visual neu rons and cause them to fire in dif ferent pat terns so the person can"see"a red apple. Bar rett is a fac ulty member in the Depart ment of Psy chology and is director of the Inter dis ci pli nary Affec tive Sci ence Lab o ra tory. A pio neer in the psy chology of emo tion and affec tive neu ro science she has chal lenged the foun da tion of affec tive sci ence by showing that people are the archi tects of their own emo tional experiences. Arraycommon sense tells you that seeing is believing, but really the brain is built for things to work the other way around: you see (and hear and smell and taste) what you believe. And believing is largely based on feeling. In her paper, Bar rett shows that your brain is wired not to be a reac tive organ. It's wired to ask the ques tion:""The last time I was in a sit u a tion like this, what sen sa tions did I encounter, and how did I act?""And the sen sa tions that seem to matter most are the ones that are inside your own body, which are called"interoceptions.""""What your brain is trying to do is guess what the sen sa tion means and what's causing the sen sa tions so it can figure out what to do about them, "Bar rett said.""Your brain is trying to put together thoughts, feel ings, and per cep tions so they arrive as needed, not a second afterwards. a

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