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Published in the scientific journal Entropy, the paper explores connections between Freud's original theories, later developments in psychoanalysis, and a modern approach to brain research known as the prediction paradigm.

This approach describes the brain as a prediction machine. Rather than simply responding to information from the outside world, the brain is constantly anticipating what will happen next. It then compares those expectations with incoming information from the senses and works to reduce any differences between what it predicted and what actually occurred.

Scientists believe this ongoing process plays a central role in how people perceive their surroundings, make decisions, behave, and regulate emotions.

Researchers Erik Stänicke, Bendik Hovet, and Line Indrevoll Stänicke, together with colleagues, argue that this modern understanding of brain function has important parallels with ideas that psychoanalysts have been developing for more than a century.

"For over 130 years, psychoanalysis has developed psychological theories about how predictions take place at a subjective level, which cognitive neuropsychology is now studying at a physiological level."

How Freud's Ideas Connect to the Predictive Brain

Although neuroscience and psychoanalysis approach the mind differently, the researchers suggest that both may be describing related processes.

Neuroscience examines the physical mechanisms behind thought and behavior, often using mathematical models to explain how the brain processes information. Psychoanalysis, which grew out of Freud's work, focuses more on unconscious mental processes, emotional experiences, and the ways past relationships influence present behavior.

In other words, one field investigates what happens inside the brain, while the other explores how those processes are experienced by the individual.

A particularly interesting connection involves the psychoanalytic concept of projection and the neuroscientific concept of prediction.

In psychoanalysis, projection involves attributing feelings, intentions, or qualities to someone else. The researchers suggest that this resembles how the brain uses previously learned expectations to interpret new experiences.

"When we attribute qualities, intentions or feelings to other people, our brain shapes our experience of the world in line with established expectations," says Stänicke.

For instance, someone who has repeatedly experienced rejection may become especially sensitive to signs that other people are rejecting them. Even an ambiguous remark or facial expression might be interpreted negatively because past experiences have shaped what the person expects.

Over time, these expectations can influence how someone approaches unfamiliar situations and forms new relationships.

"This corresponds to the neuroscientific distinction between changing one's own predictions, perceptual inference, and the attempt to make the world conform to them, namely active inference."

Perceptual inference refers to the way the brain interprets sensory information and updates its expectations in response. Active inference, by contrast, involves taking actions that help bring experiences into line with predictions or reduce uncertainty.

Together, these concepts help explain why people do not always experience the world as it objectively is. Their expectations can influence what they notice, how they interpret events, and how they respond.

Why the Brain Holds On to Negative Expectations

The researchers believe the similarities between Freud's ideas and modern neuroscience could offer valuable insights into mental health disorders, particularly those involving deeply established patterns of thinking and behavior.

Both approaches portray the mind as constantly seeking stability and predictability. This tendency is related to homeostasis, the process through which a system maintains a relatively stable internal state.

In the predictive brain model, reducing uncertainty is an important part of maintaining that stability. The brain relies on familiar expectations to make the world easier to understand, even when those expectations are inaccurate or no longer helpful.

"Psychoanalysts refer to the tendency in the mind to recreate familiar relational patterns, even when these are poorly adapted," says Stänicke.

This could help explain why people sometimes repeat harmful patterns in relationships or continue interpreting situations negatively despite evidence that challenges their assumptions.

"Rigid and persistent symptoms, such as paranoid ideas or an internalized critical voice, may be stable but not very flexible prediction models," says Stänicke.

"For example, there may be people who automatically expect criticism, rejection or hostility from others, and therefore interpret situations through this filter despite the fact that reality does not warrant it."

Such expectations can become deeply entrenched because they make experiences feel familiar and predictable. Even when the resulting interpretation is distorted, maintaining an established mental model may feel less uncertain than changing it.

According to Stänicke, this offers a possible explanation for why some psychological symptoms can persist for years and why changing longstanding patterns of thought and behavior often requires considerable time.

The connection is particularly interesting because it suggests that some mental health difficulties may involve more than consciously held beliefs. They may also reflect deeply learned expectations that automatically shape emotional responses and interactions with others.

How Psychotherapy Could Help Change Deeply Rooted Patterns

The researchers also highlight an important distinction between what people consciously believe and what they have learned through experience.

"In addition, both models give us insight into how parts of our expectations of the outside world are not only anchored cognitively, but in procedural memory that is expressed in relational ways of being," he says.

Procedural memory is a type of long-term memory involved in learned habits and skills. It allows people to perform familiar actions without consciously thinking through every step.

In the context of relationships, the researchers suggest that a similar form of learning may help explain why certain emotional reactions and patterns of interaction become automatic.

Someone might intellectually understand that other people are not necessarily hostile or critical, for example, yet still instinctively respond as though rejection is inevitable.

These expectations are not simply thoughts that can be changed through reasoning. They can also be embedded in habitual ways of reacting to people and navigating relationships.

This distinction may help explain why psychotherapy sometimes needs to address personal relationships and emotional experiences rather than focusing only on conscious thoughts.

"Therefore, psychotherapy sometimes has to work relationally. For example, new experiences in the relationship between therapist and patient can gradually help to change entrenched relational patterns."

Through repeated experiences that challenge familiar expectations, patients may gradually develop different ways of interpreting situations and relating to other people.

Bringing Freud's Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience Together

The researchers argue that connecting psychoanalysis with modern predictive brain theory could benefit both fields.

Neuroscience may provide a biological framework for understanding processes that psychoanalysts have long described through subjective experience. At the same time, psychoanalytic theories may offer more detailed explanations of how expectations are experienced emotionally, interpreted personally, and expressed through relationships.

The proposed similarities do not establish that Freud's broader theories were correct. Instead, they suggest that two very different traditions of studying the mind may offer complementary ways of understanding some of the same psychological processes.

By examining both the brain's physical mechanisms and the individual's inner experience, researchers hope to develop a more complete understanding of human behavior and mental health.

"Bringing these two fields together can open up for a more holistic psychology, in which both neurological mechanisms and subjective experience are included. In this way, we can understand subjectivity in a more scientific manner."