the predictive processing model, the best introduction to it imo is this review of "surfing uncertainty" - https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-sur

the predictive processing model, the best introduction to it imo is this review of "surfing uncertainty" - https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-un... > 7. The Placebo Effect. We hear a lot about “pain gating” in the spine, but the PP model does a good job of explaining what this is: adjusting pain based on top-down priors. If you believe you should be in pain, the brain will use that as a filter to interpret ambiguous low-precision pain signals. If you believe you shouldn’t, the brain will be more likely to assume ambiguous low-precision pain signals are a mistake. So if you take a pill that doctors assure you will cure your pain, then your lower layers are more likely to interpret pain signals as noise, “cook the books” and prevent them from reaching your consciousness. > Psychosomatic pain is the opposite of this; see Section 7.10 of the book for a fuller explanation.