what does it mean that the brain is generating information? that to some extent, it has more information than our sensory neurons do?
- In 2024-09-12 9.360 - neurobiology of self, Fan states that it seems like the brain has more information about an object than is contained in the set of sensory neurons.
- This is because it's generating information.
- But... what does that mean? Formally, in the information-theory sense... I don't think this really makes any sense.
- However, intuitively it makes sense, since the brain is able to fill in the gaps.
- I can feel a leaf and be able to tell what its color is, even though I haven't opened my eyes
- This is because there exists structure to the world.
- Really, the color green isn't new information, since the conditional entropy of color given the feel (for this realization of feel) is close to 0.
- However, being able to use this structure is itself not immediate. It's something learned. You could give blindfold me an give me a basketball, and I'd be able to predict its color. But presumably a baby wouldn't be able to do this.
- So... what information is being added?
- It almost feels related to inductive bias: it's a regularity in our model which helps us extrapolate to far out of distribution (we didn't get any visual data, yet we can predict it)