ArticleScience advances2025
Decoding predicted future states from the brain's "physics engine".
Article in Science advances, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Distinct and shared neural resources between processing of dynamic physical objects and spatial working memory.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Visual Simulation Is Supported by Sequential Monitoring in the Lateral Prefrontal Cortex.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Bottom-up and generative computations uniquely explain neural responses across the social brain.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Successful engagement with the physical world requires the ability to predict future events and plan interventions to alter that future. Growing evidence implicates a set of regions in the human parietal and frontal lobes [also known as the "physics network" (PN)] in such intuitive physical inferences. However, the central tenet of this hypothesis, that PN runs forward simulations to predict future states, remains untested. In this preregistered study, we first show that PN abstractly represents whether two objects are in contact with each other, a physical scene property critical for prediction (because objects' fates are intertwined when they are in contact). We then show that PN (but not other visual areas) carries abstract information about predicted future contact events (i.e., collisions). These findings support the hypothesis that PN contains a generative model of the physical world that conducts forward simulations, serving as the brain's "physics engine."
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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.