We have access to a considerable amount of data about the brain. As a result, we know a great deal about how the human brain works. Yet, we still don’t have a theory of how the brain works as a whole. Most of the current research is directed toward collecting more test data about the brain’s subsystems. In 1979, Francis Crick noted that neuroscience was a lot of data without any theory. So far as the emergence of a theory is concerned, not much has changed.

In recent years, however, many researchers have developed unifying ideas about how the brain functions as an interconnected subsystems, how it processes information towards a final action. This research field is becoming very interesting. Increased sophistication of neurophysiological techniques, use of ideas from statistical mechanics, and information theory are helping the investigators for better understanding of the brain function. Such studies may help to explain results of experiments, as well as the development of theories for function of the brain as a whole.

Among these studies a special approach, so called the “Bayesian brain” seems to offer an interesting choice towards preliminary theory of the human brain. The Bayesian brain, which is conceptualised as a probability system, makes preditictions about the environment and updates them by using the input information it senses.

Discussion of such investigations by the interested group members, especially members from the NIH, would be very informative.