Even while listening, the brain attempts to anticipate the next words. This is the conclusion reached by a current study conducted by an interdisciplinary team of researchers led by PD Dr. Patrick Krauss, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), and PD Dr. Achim Schilling, Heidelberg University. The researchers combined three methods: a natural listening situation, high resolution measurements of brain activity, and an AI language model as reference. The higher the probability of a certain word occurring in the relevant context, the weaker the neural reaction during processing. At the same time, the data indicate a rise in pre-onset activity before the word begins, suggesting the brain works with predictions.

The human brain’s ability to filter relevant information from the vast amount of data it continuously receives is known as attention. Researchers at BIFOLD at the Technical University of Berlin, in close collaboration with scientists from the Kording Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, have developed a brain-inspired AI model of visual attention. What is particularly remarkable is that the model reproduces numerous well-established behavioral and perceptual phenomena from psychology and neurophysiology without these effects having been explicitly programmed into it. This not only advances our understanding of human visual perception but also provides a new perspective and framework for AI researchers. The joint study has now been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Beneath the tropical trees of southern Mexico, enormous shoals of sulphur mollies blanket the water surface of toxic sulphur springs, where survival depends on collective defence against relentless attacks from predatory birds. The tiny fish survive attacks of birds through creating spectacular collective waves. But new research now shows that their avian predators are adapting too, changing where they attack to avoid triggering the fish’s powerful group defence. The fish, in turn, appear to fight back with a surprising form of collective “memory.” The study by the Cluster of Excellence “Science of Intelligence” (SCIoI) in collaboration with the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) was published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.