The Memory Prediction Framework

The commonsense view of the brain treats it as a sophisticated input-output device: sensory data arrives, computation occurs, behavior results. Jeff Hawkins argues that this picture misses the essential thing the neocortex is doing every moment, which is not computing outputs but generating expectations about what its inputs will be next. The neocortex is a memory system, but a peculiar one: not a storehouse of static facts but a dynamic model that continuously uses what it has learned to anticipate what is coming. As you read this sentence, your cortex is predicting the next word before your eyes reach it. As you walk into a familiar room, it has already predicted what you will see, hear, and feel. These predictions run constantly and almost entirely below awareness, and you notice them only when they fail—when a stair is higher than expected, or a word lands wrong, and the jolt