Linnaea Ostroff reviews Predictions in the Brain: Using Our Past to Generate a Future, Edited by Moshe Bar, Nature:
...Yet one question has been neglected: why does memory exist? ...“Memories are made mostly for the sake of present and future.” Memory systems do not store past experiences, but recycle their components into the imagined future.
In throwing evolutionary light on a fundamental process, this idea has legs. As survival advantages go, our ability to envision and plan a nuanced future is a masterpiece — arguably, the root of our success as a species. If memories are used to generate predictions that drive our actions, then the mechanisms of prediction are as worthy of study as those of memory. The growing body of experimental data reviewed in this volume supports a shift in memory research from storage to prediction.
From anticipating fine motor movements to imagining our old age, what we think will happen in the future depends on what we know has been. We hit a baseball on the basis of how we have done it before; our experience of traffic lights allows us to anticipate and halt in front of the red one. With only past events to rely on, however, accurate prediction is difficult. A memory system must store information reliably, yet be flexible enough to keep knowledge up to date and to know which items are relevant to a particular purpose. The brain manages these challenges well. It is easy to think of memories as faithful, discrete records of our past, pressed and dried like items in a scrapbook. They are not — and for good reason. ...
Beyond the constant generation of everyday predictions, our brains also create detailed pictures of future events. This capacity is thought to be uniquely human, and occupies a significant portion of our mental activity. It is entwined with episodic memory — our personal collection of autobiographical clips. Predictions in the Brain reviews experimental evidence for substantial overlap between memory recall and future simulation. ...
Memories are not the flotsam of the past: they are the raw materials of cognition.
I like the concept, but as always, the execution of the details is what matters. Speculation is cheap. Will this research direction go somewhere?
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