Prediction, perception and agency

The articles in this special issue provide a rich and thoughtful perspective on the brain as an inference machine. They illuminate key aspects of the internal or generative models the brain might use for perception. Furthermore, they explore the implications for a sense of agency and the nature of false inference in neuropsychiatric syndromes. In this review, I try to gather together some of the themes that emerge in this special issue and use them to illustrate how far one can take the notion of predictive coding in understanding behaviour and agency. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.