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The brain predicts the future

12.12.2018

We constantly predict the future, and there is no mysticism here. For example, a driver, seeing how a red traffic light has changed from yellow, to get ready to take off - he knows that there will be a green signal soon. Or when we just tap out the rhythm to the sound of music - our finger begins to move in advance to get into the rhythm beat. In this sense, predicting the future is indeed commonplace; moreover, without such a skill, our life would be much more difficult.

But it's easy to see that the example of the driver is not like the example of tapping the rhythm. In the first case, the brain guesses the future based on past experience: we know that after a yellow signal, green always lights up. In the second case, the brain feels the rhythm, and even if we have not heard this music before, we can still follow the rhythmic pattern.

Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley found that different areas of the brain are responsible for both types of predictions. Patients with Parkinson's syndrome and cerebellar degeneration participated in the experiments: they were shown multi-colored squares replacing each other on the screen - red, white and green, with white after red and green after white. It was necessary to predict the appearance of green by pressing a special button.

But in one case, the squares appeared with a constant rhythm, and in the other case, the time between red and green was constantly changing. That is, the appearance of green could be predicted either by rhythm or by focusing on the white square. Squares with a constant rhythm felt worse in patients with Parkinson's syndrome, and where there was no clear rhythm and it was necessary to focus on the previous white, big problems arose in patients with cerebellar degeneration.

Parkinson's disease affects the so-called basal ganglia, which have quite a few different functions. Obviously, among other things, they control "rhythmic predictions". The cerebellum, apparently, controls the ability to guess events by their sequence, when we know that one must necessarily be followed by something else. It used to be believed that both types of "guessing the future" are regulated by the same system of nerve centers. Perhaps now that we know that there are actually two of these systems, we can better understand the nature of some neuropsychiatric disorders accompanied by impairments to speech, attention, and other higher cognitive functions.

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