ReviewTrends in cognitive sciences2021
The secret life of predictive brains: what's spontaneous activity for?
Review in Trends in cognitive sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 82 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
82 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Comprehensive investigation of predictive processing: A cross- and within-cognitive domains fMRI meta-analytic approach.Human brain mapping · 2024Pooled it
- Resting state functional connectivity changes following mindfulness-based stress reduction predict improvements in disease control for patients with asthma.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2024Trial
- Ongoing thoughts at rest reflect functional brain organization and behaviour.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Frequency-Specific Neural Dynamics and Decoding of Hierarchical Auditory Sequences Revealed by Magnetoencephalography.Neuroscience bulletin · 2026Article
- Anti-NMDAR encephalitis impairs intrinsic hippocampal dynamics through neuronal hypercoupling, hub dominance, and aberrant ensembles.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- The hippocampus as a generative model.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2026Review
- Whisker stimulation reinforces a resting-state network in the barrel cortex: Nested oscillations and avalanches.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- In-scanner thoughts contribute to resting-state functional connectivity.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Rethinking the extrastriate body area: from body perception to action priors.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2026Review
- Large-scale brain dynamics are organized by a directional coordination hierarchy.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Global neural oscillations underlie performance variability and attentional state fluctuations in humans.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Bridging glucose metabolism and intrinsic functional organization of the human cortex.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Spontaneous brain regional dynamics contribute to generalizable brain-behaviour associations.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Accelerated recovery using magnesium ibogaine: characterizing the subjective experience of its rapid healing from neuropsychiatric disorders.Npj mental health research · 2026Article
- Gone fishin'… for distinct patterns of belief-updating in late-life worry and rumination.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Spontaneously emerging patterns in human motor cortex code for somatotopic specific movements.iScience · 2025Article
- Cross-spatial scale processing of hierarchical auditory sequences in human brains revealed using 7 T magnetic resonance imaging.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Brain metabolic-functional (de)coupling from health to glioma dysfunction.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Spontaneous fluctuations in global connectivity reflect transitions between states of high and low prediction error.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Predictive Coding Light.Nature communications · 2025Article
22 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Brains at rest generate dynamical activity that is highly structured in space and time. We suggest that spontaneous activity, as in rest or dreaming, underlies top-down dynamics of generative models. During active tasks, generative models provide top-down predictive signals for perception, cognition, and action. When the brain is at rest and stimuli are weak or absent, top-down dynamics optimize the generative models for future interactions by maximizing the entropy of explanations and minimizing model complexity. Spontaneous fluctuations of correlated activity within and across brain regions may reflect transitions between 'generic priors' of the generative model: low dimensional latent variables and connectivity patterns of the most common perceptual, motor, cognitive, and interoceptive states. Even at rest, brains are proactive and predictive.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.