Unravelling the Neural Substrates of Predictive Processing

Mounting evidence suggests that the brain is a predictive machine. Although the cognitive neuroscience literature has long hypothesized that the brain may employ a hierarchical generative framework for predictive processing, many neurobiological details remain unknown. Predictive processing is fundamental to perception, cognition and action, and aberrant predictive processing may account for several neurological and psychiatric disorders. Therefore, it has become important to elucidate the neural substrates of predictive processing - to advance our mechanistic understanding of human intelligence and other cognitive elements critical to human nature (e.g. sense of agency) - as well as to develop better therapeutic approaches to psychiatric conditions. However, to elucidate how the brain implements predictive processing requires a multidisciplinary synergy between basic and clinical research from animal models, human subjects and computational models. In this special issue, we welcome papers that aim at revealing the neural mechanisms of predictive processing, including but not limited to the following topics:

1) To illustrate the neural circuits and/or dynamics responsible for the neural computations that support predictive processing, especially at the mesoscale level;

2) To investigate the functional roles of predictive processing in higher-order cognitive processes, such as attention and memory;

3) To explore the generalizability of the neural circuits of predictive processing across rodents, non-human primates and humans;

4) To investigate the functional significance of predictive processing in brain development and psychiatric disease;

5) To construct biologically realistic computational models of predictive processing and/or explore brain-inspired (biomimetic) artificial intelligence using the neurobiological formulations of predictive processing;

6) Other topics relevant to predictive processing.