Surprise in the brain: Theory and Experiments

Surprise and other signals related to surprise, such as novelty and prediction error, are believed to have important roles in the brain: They affect physiological indicators such as pupil diameter and EEG amplitude, trigger the release of neuromodulators such as norepinephrine, and influence behavior through the shift of attention, memory segmentation, and modulation of learning speed. How and why these signals are involved in all these different phenomena have been subjects of a long-lasting debate in neuroscience and psychology. A systematic challenge in addressing the functional role of surprise-related signals is that different studies often refer to different quantities by “surprise” or use it interchangeably with “novelty”, “prediction error”, and “information gain”. In this workshop, we gather experimental and computational researchers from different sub-fields of neuroscience to discuss and review different concepts of surprise and their influence on physiological and behavioral measurements. Our goal is to take a step towards a consensus on the definitions of different surprise-related quantities and their functional roles in the brain.