full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Anil Seth: Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality

Unscramble the Blue Letters

iganime being a brain. You're lckeod inside a bony skull, trying to figure what's out there in the world. There's no lights inside the slukl. There's no sound either. All you've got to go on is streams of eretilcacl impulses which are only indirectly related to things in the world, whatever they may be. So perception — figuring out what's there — has to be a process of informed guesswork in which the brain combines these sensory signals with its prior expectations or beliefs about the way the world is to form its best guess of what caused those signals. The barin doesn't hear sound or see light. What we perceive is its best guess of what's out there in the world.

Open Cloze

_______ being a brain. You're ______ inside a bony skull, trying to figure what's out there in the world. There's no lights inside the _____. There's no sound either. All you've got to go on is streams of __________ impulses which are only indirectly related to things in the world, whatever they may be. So perception — figuring out what's there — has to be a process of informed guesswork in which the brain combines these sensory signals with its prior expectations or beliefs about the way the world is to form its best guess of what caused those signals. The _____ doesn't hear sound or see light. What we perceive is its best guess of what's out there in the world.

Solution

  1. brain
  2. imagine
  3. locked
  4. skull
  5. electrical

Original Text

Imagine being a brain. You're locked inside a bony skull, trying to figure what's out there in the world. There's no lights inside the skull. There's no sound either. All you've got to go on is streams of electrical impulses which are only indirectly related to things in the world, whatever they may be. So perception — figuring out what's there — has to be a process of informed guesswork in which the brain combines these sensory signals with its prior expectations or beliefs about the way the world is to form its best guess of what caused those signals. The brain doesn't hear sound or see light. What we perceive is its best guess of what's out there in the world.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
perceptual predictions 4
rubber hand 4
fake hand 4
conscious experience 3
sensory signals 3
sensory information 3
signals coming 3
controlled hallucination 3
fact part 3
biological mechanisms 3
conscious experiences 2
controlled hallucinations 2
living bodies 2
specific experience 2
prior expectations 2
virtual reality 2
overly strong 2
strong perceptual 2
internal state 2
hand illusion 2
deeply grounded 2
greater sense 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
overly strong perceptual 2
strong perceptual predictions 2
sensory signals coming 2
rubber hand illusion 2

ngrams of length 4

collocation frequency
overly strong perceptual predictions 2

Important Words

  1. beliefs
  2. bony
  3. brain
  4. caused
  5. combines
  6. electrical
  7. expectations
  8. figure
  9. figuring
  10. form
  11. guess
  12. guesswork
  13. hear
  14. imagine
  15. impulses
  16. indirectly
  17. informed
  18. light
  19. lights
  20. locked
  21. perceive
  22. perception
  23. prior
  24. process
  25. related
  26. sensory
  27. signals
  28. skull
  29. sound
  30. streams
  31. world