Prediction and Expectation

Prediction and Expectation

Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

Aesthetic reward tracks the relationship between what you expected next and what arrived, not the thing itself. Which means the reward depends on everything you have already heard.

What it is

Cortical systems learn a pattern and generate expectations from it. Subcortical systems assign reward and value. On the account Zatorre and Salimpoor set out, pleasure emerges where those two meet, in the gap between prediction and event.

The claim is relational, and that is the whole of its explanatory power and the whole of its commercial uselessness.