All posts tagged: Predictive

Scientists challenge The Body Keeps the Score with a new predictive model of trauma

Scientists challenge The Body Keeps the Score with a new predictive model of trauma

A recent theoretical paper published in Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience suggests that psychological trauma is not literally stored in the tissues of the body. Instead, the authors propose that trauma creates a rigid pattern of threat prediction within the brain, reducing cognitive flexibility. This updated perspective provides evidence that therapies focusing on mental state shifting, such as flow states, may help retrain the nervous system and support recovery. In 2014, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk published The Body Keeps the Score, a book suggesting that trauma alters the nervous system and becomes physically lodged in the body. The bestseller popularized the idea that individuals cannot simply talk through trauma, as the body continues to react to past threats. While the book gained immense public and clinical popularity, some scientists have criticized its underlying biological mechanisms. Scientists Steven Kotler, Michael Mannino, Glenn Fox, and Karl Friston recently authored a paper to address these mechanistic discrepancies. They argue that the popular metaphor of somatic storage is biologically inaccurate. They propose an alternative model based on computational neuroscience. …

Internal Family Systems and the Predictive Brain

Internal Family Systems and the Predictive Brain

Co-authored with Sarah Bergenfield Anyone who has ever trained for an event knows the dedication and resolve required. We add mileage, weight, reps, or minutes, a little at a time, in the hope that our bodies will become stronger and more accustomed to what we are asking of them. Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman reminds us that “we don’t train for events, we train for circumstances.” Training for a marathon doesn’t prepare the body for race day itself. It prepares the body for the conditions of long-distance running: sustained effort, discomfort, fatigue, unpredictability, and the need to keep going even when the finish line isn’t in sight. Muscles strengthen, mitochondria multiply, connective tissue adapts, and the cardiovascular system becomes more efficient, not because the body has rehearsed the exact event, but because it has learned what conditions to expect. Over time, the body builds a tolerance for those conditions, and the window of what it can handle begins to expand, because the brain learns to predict the conditions it expects to encounter. The Predictive Brain Rather than …