Neurons in human claustrum track uncertainty and prediction errors, study finds
VoidStateKate · x · 2026-10-10
- A new Nature Neuroscience study challenges the "humans aren't predictive processing machines like AIs" camp.
- Researchers recorded individual neurons in seven epilepsy patients playing a spaceship game requiring them to predict where obstacles would appear.
- Neurons in the claustrum were found to track two remarkable quantities: situational uncertainty and prediction errors.
- These cells didn't just respond to stimuli—their activity encoded mathematically inferred uncertainty and expectation-violation signals.
- The author's takeaway: humans are next-token prediction engines too.
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