6 Everyday Glitches That Show Your Brain Predicts the Future

Your brain isn't recording the world. It's guessing it, and here are six times you can catch it. Wiggle your fingers on your own ribs and... nothing. Let a friend do it and you crack up. The difference is your brain: it predicts what's about to happen a split second early. Most of the time you never notice. But sometimes the guess shows. Chapters 0:00 Try this: tickle yourself 0:37 1. Why you can't tickle yourself 2:02 2. The broken escalator 3:18 3. You can't see your own eyes move 4:20 4. The stopped clock 5:33 5. Why shoving matches escalate 6:54 6. The hollow face 7:52 Why your brain bothers guessing Sources Tickling: Blakemore, "Why can't a person tickle himself?", Scientific American (2003): https://www.scientificamerican.com/article... Tickling: Blakemore, Wolpert & Frith, "Central cancellation of self-produced tickle sensation", Nature Neuroscience (1998): https://web.math.princeton.edu/~sswang/aut... Tickle robots: Blakemore, Wolpert & Frith, NeuroImage (1999): https://wolpertlab.neuroscience.columbia.e... Escalator: Reynolds & Bronstein, "The broken escalator phenomenon", Experimental Brain Research (2003): https://dx.doi.org/10.1007%2Fs00221-003-14... Eye jumps: "What Is Saccade?", Indiana Public Media (2019): https://www.ipm.org/show/amomentofscience/... Stopped clock: Yarrow et al., Nature (2001): https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/33... Stopped clock: "Why a Watched Clock Won't Tick", HealthDay (2001): https://www.healthday.com/health-news/eye-... Shoving: Shergill, Bays, Frith & Wolpert, "Two eyes for an eye", Science (2003): https://wolpertlab.neuroscience.columbia.e... Shoving: UCL News (2003): https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2003/jul/playgr... Hollow face: Papathomas et al., i-Perception (2012): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3... Hollow face: "The Hollow Mask Illusion", Discover (2009): https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-hollo... Signals arrive late: Eagleman & Sejnowski, Journal of Vision (2007): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2... Charts in the video marked "illustration" show the trend, not the studies' exact numbers. Odd Little Why: simple questions, surprising answers. #brain #psychology #neuroscience #science #oddlittlewhy