How the Brain Builds Reality
Explore how neural circuitry actively synthesizes your perception, memories, and attention. Move beyond pop-psychology myths into the predictive mechanics and functional networks of the working brain.
Like Duolingo, but for How the Brain Builds Reality. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes end to end, roughly 5 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Constructing Daily Perception and Modifying Internal Blueprints. It assumes you already know the basics.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in How the Brain Builds Reality
- Higher cortical areas send predictive hypotheses down to sensory cortices.
- Sensory organs only need to transmit unexpected signals rather than full scenes.
- The difference between prediction and input generates an error that updates the model.
- Accurately predicted sensations cancel out early in sensory hierarchies.
- Ascending prediction errors recruit conscious attention to update mental states.
- Precision weighting selectively amplifies informative surprises over predictable noise.
- Optical illusions occur in cortical processing networks, not retinal receptors.
- A lifetime prior that faces are convex overrides genuine depth stereopsis cues.
- Perceptual illusions reflect optimal Bayesian inference resolving ambiguous scenes.
- Hallucinations happen when top-down expectations are weighted too heavily over sensory evidence.
- Sensory hypersensitivity in autism can stem from failure to attenuate low-level prediction errors.
- Semantic cues provide a high-level prior that reinterprets degraded sensory input.
- The physical acoustic waveform reaching the cochlea remains completely identical.
- Top-down priors constrain how lower auditory areas resolve ambiguous acoustic tokens.
- Complex cognition emerges from synchrony across distributed functional brain circuits
- Classic localized brain centers interact dynamically rather than working as independent modules
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives How the Brain Builds Reality the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
To save energy and processing power, what do your sensory pathways transmit back up to the brain?
Get it right to open this lesson and 11 more in the app.
How to learn How the Brain Builds Reality, step by step
Go in order. 12 short levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes in all, five minutes a day.
- 1
Constructing Daily Perception
- Predictive Processing: How Expectations Shape Sensation
- Network Dynamics: Directing the Brain's Gatekeepers
- 2
Modifying Internal Blueprints
- Memory Reconsolidation: Updating the Recorded Past
- Neuromodulatory Tuning: Navigating Global Brain States
2 sections · 4 units · 12 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Questions about How the Brain Builds Reality
How do I learn How the Brain Builds Reality?
Go in order: start with Constructing Daily Perception, then Modifying Internal Blueprints. On Tomo that's 12 short levels, about 24 minutes in all, played five minutes a day. Start free and play the first level in under a minute.
Is there a Duolingo-style app for How the Brain Builds Reality?
Yes. Tomo works like Duolingo: short daily lessons, streaks and quick quizzes. How the Brain Builds Reality is one of its free courses, and you can type any other topic to get a course of your own.
Is the How the Brain Builds Reality course free?
Yes. How the Brain Builds Reality is playable on Tomo's free plan, which doesn't expire. No credit card, no waitlist. Download the app and start your first lesson.
How long does it take to learn How the Brain Builds Reality?
12 levels across 2 sections, about 24 minutes of play in total. It's built for five minutes a day, so you finish it a little at a time instead of all at once.
Do I need any background to start How the Brain Builds Reality?
No. It's pitched at an intermediate level, so it starts where you are and builds up. If you can tap a phone, you can start.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
How the Brain Builds Reality is taught in the Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start How the Brain Builds Reality today.
Download Tomo, search How the Brain Builds Reality, and play your first lesson in under a minute.