The Brain and the Cost of Certainty

Brain Predictions
Written By Ashley Renee Colen

Note: A glossary is provided at the bottom of this post to support understanding and help you stay immersed in the content. I hope it adds to your experience.

At every moment, we believe we are making decisions based on clear choices; yes or no, right or wrong, success or failure. But neurologically, we are not living in a world of true absolutes. We are living in a world based on neural predictions.

What often feels like “binary thinking” is the brain’s attempt to reduce uncertainty. The human brain favors coherence and consistency not because it loves rigidity, but because prediction is metabolically efficient, meaning certainty costs less energy than ambiguity.

Predictive Certainty From Early Adolescence

This shows up early.

In first grade, children are asked a deceptively simple question: What do you want to be when you grow up? When a child responds with “doctor,” “lawyer,” “nurse,” or “firefighter,” the answer is met with affirmation. When the response is “I don’t know,” or something less socially legible such as “famous athlete,” “artist,” or “rapper,” it’s often met with polite concern.

What we rarely acknowledge is that a seven-year-old does not yet possess the neural architecture to answer that question meaningfully. The prefrontal and default-mode networks in the brain responsible for identity formation, future simulation, and self-modeling are still developing. The odds that a child understands the depth of what they are being asked are incredibly low, bordering on improbable.

And yet, we reward certainty anyway.

Adults do this not out of malice, but because many of us have settled into our own form of predictive rigidity [more on this in future blogs]. In predictive neuroscience, this is sometimes described as hyper-precise priors; models of the world that have become so stable they resist updating. Rigid certainty feels safe to the brain because it minimizes surprise.

Predictive Certainty Shaped By Our Environment

The environment matters here, too.

The brain regulates the body in context, not in isolation. A child raised in a resource-rich, stable environment develops very different predictions about safety and possibility than a child raised in volatility or scarcity. Neither brain is “wrong.” Both are making biologically rational predictions based on their histories.

A child who has less and is labeled ‘unlikely to succeed’ develops predictive models about safety, survival, and the future that differ from both a child who has more resources as well as a child who has similar material conditions but receives positive labels such as “likely to succeed.”


When Certainty Becomes Identity: "What Is My Purpose?"

As children move through adolescence, they begin forming predictive models about identity, safety, and the future based on both their environments and the signals they receive from others. When certainty is rewarded or required, those predictions can harden into a sense of who we “should” be.

Over time, that sense of certainty can start to feel like identity, shaping how we answer questions like “What is my purpose?” and leaving us dysregulated, empty, or confused when our lived experience no longer matches the models we built. Allow me to use my story to illustrate how this happens in the brain.


A little about my brain and how I found myself in a state of neural dysfunction:

I am 34 years old.

By 32, I had spoken on global stages, become a human resources executive at a major tech company, hired my own branding agency, and was in the running for a chief human resources officer apprenticeship at a major oil and gas company. I had scaled global teams, sat on operating committees in my twenties, and helped grow a 50,000-person organization by my thirties.

I was good at what I did. Really good. And I knew it.

I worked hard. I prayed harder. I refused to sacrifice my beliefs or my morals. I believed deeply that I was showing the world you could lead with both conviction and compassion. I had answered the childhood question. I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up and I could map the next five years with ease.

Then something disrupted everything.

In the same year I reached a new peak of my professional trajectory, I experienced a profound spiritual reckoning. Christ told me I was distracted. (Yep—He just showed up in a neuroscience blog.)

By May 2025, I gave notice.

By July 2025, I walked away from what I thought was a long-term calling on my life.

Instead of boardrooms, I found myself baptizing women in the Pacific Ocean. Instead of corporate strategy decks, I was teaching women about their brains, how predictions form, how patterns update, and what healing looks like.

I started a small garden with a few trees and leafy greens. That garden multiplied into dozens of herbs, vegetables, fruit trees, even tea and sugar plants, and became Sweet Humanity Kitchen; a business rooted in storytelling through food, culture, and legacy.

By December 2025, still 34 years old, I had hosted a Freedom Conference, taught my first formal Bible + Neuroscience course through my nonprofit Eight48 Ministries, and submitted applications for Neuroscience and Neurobiology PhD programs.


The same hands that once couldn’t keep an orchid alive were suddenly growing abundance.

And my brain… completely lost its footing.


Freedom felt like a threat:

From the outside, everything looked aligned. Purposeful. Peaceful. But internally, my nervous system was overwhelmed. I struggled to regulate. I struggled to receive. I struggled to freely enjoy God's provision.

It felt like accidentally plugging the red wire into the blue slot, except none of the slots were labeled.

I had entered a world where absolutes no longer existed. No five-year plan. No constant evaluation. No less than urgent urgencies disguised as importance (ya'll know what I am talking about).

There were days of sunlight, soil under my fingernails, learning for the sake of learning, and helping people without shipping MVPs on a deadline.

And oddly… I struggled.

Here’s why.

Neuroscience 101: Time To Nerd Out For A Moment

Your brain’s primary job is not thinking or managing your IQ. It is regulation.

Through a process called allostasis, the brain predicts the body’s future energy needs and allocates resources accordingly. Think of it as body budgeting. It anticipates demands before they arise using past experience, context, and internal bodily signals.


For example, let's look at how the body responds to a threat/stress response:

When a threat is detected, physical or psychological, your body responds automatically: heart rate rises, breathing changes, focus narrows, cortisol releases. Energy is redistributed to keep you safe. Memory encoding sharpens. Immune cells mobilize. And all of this happens without conscious permission.

When the threat resolves, the system attempts to return to balance. But here’s the critical part: what counts as “safe” or “normal” depends entirely on the nervous system’s history.

If you have spent years in high-pressure, tightly structured environments, your brain may learn that tension is predictable.  MIND BLOWING, RIGHT? (Totally understand if it's just me—reminds me of the time a good friend left me hanging on “Hamilton” as an opening song for one of my talks....[squirrel moment]). 

High pressure, tightly structured environments now 'equal' efficient. Familiar.
So when I entered an immediate season of freedom consisting of more time to personally distribute, emotional safety, and unstructured creativity, all at once— my brain couldn't take it. My brain did not register freedom and rest. It registered it as uncertainty!

Uncertainty carries metabolic cost. That’s why calm can feel agitating, rest can feel wrong, and freedom can feel unsafe.

Neurologically, I wasn’t broken (although I felt totally broken). I was updating.

Closing: From "Absolute Certainty" to "Both-And" Thinking

What I experienced was prediction error—the signal that the world no longer matches the brain’s model.

Updating those models takes energy (in my case, lots of energy). It takes time. Until new patterns become familiar, the nervous system may oscillate between dysregulation and growth.

This is where “both-and” thinking lives, not as a fun new personality trait or measure of EQ, but as a measure of neural capacity. Cognitive flexibility emerges when the brain reduces the precision of rigid priors and allows competing predictions to coexist long enough to learn.

It’s biological.

It’s spiritual.

And it’s deeply human.

The brain is a prediction machine; it is also a learning machine. And learning, by definition, requires uncertainty.

Next month, I’ll talk more about “both-and thinking” and the neural architecture that supports it. Thanks for nerding out with me today.

The brain, truly, is fascinating.


Glossary

  • Your body’s ability to anticipate and prepare for changes in needs (like energy, hydration, or stress) before they become urgent. It’s how your brain proactively adjusts your systems (e.g., heart rate, digestion, mood) to maintain stability—not just reacting (homeostasis) to problems after they occur. Think of it like a thermostat that predicts when to turn on the heat, not just when it’s already cold.

    See Homeostasis to learn about your body “reacting to” vs “anticipating” needs.


  • Automatic reactions controlled by your autonomic nervous system (ANS), which runs without conscious effort. These include things like your heart racing during danger (fight‑or‑flight) or slowing down while resting (rest‑and-digest). These responses help your body adapt to challenges without you thinking about them.

    For this who want to really nerd out—

    What is the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)?
    The ANS is part of the nervous system and controls involuntary functions like heart rate, breathing, digestion, and pupil size. It has two main branches:

    1. Sympathetic nervous system: Activates “fight-or-flight” responses (e.g., faster heart rate, dilated pupils).

    2. Parasympathetic nervous system: Activates “rest-and-digest” responses (e.g., slower heart rate, digestion).

    The ANS is not the same as the entire nervous system. The nervous system includes:

    • Central nervous system (CNS): Brain and spinal cord (processing and decision-making).

    • Peripheral nervous system (PNS): Nerves connecting the CNS to the body, including the ANS and somatic nervous system (which controls voluntary movements like walking or typing).

      • Key distinction

        • The ANS focuses on involuntary, automatic functions (e.g., blood pressure), while the somatic nervous system handles voluntary, conscious actions.


  • A hormone released by your adrenal glands during stress, part of the body’s “alarm system.” It helps regulate energy, suppress inflammation, and keep you alert. Cortisol levels naturally rise when you wake up and fall at night, but chronic stress can disrupt this rhythm.

  • When the brain’s systems for managing stress, emotions, or bodily functions become imbalanced. This can lead to symptoms like chronic anxiety, fatigue, or digestive issues.

    Consider a thermostat. When working properly, the thermostat senses temperature changes and keeps the room comfortable by turning heating or cooling on and off as needed. But if it becomes miscalibrated, say, it’s reading the room as colder or hotter than it actually is, it overcorrects or undercorrects. The result is uncomfortable temp swings instead of steady balanced room temperatures. .

    Similarly, when the brain’s regulatory systems (for stress, mood, or body functions) become dysregulated, they misread internal signals and over‑ or under‑react. This leads to instability, like chronic anxiety, fatigue, or emotional volatility. This is because the brain’s “set‑point detector” like in our example above  is no longer tuned correctly.

  • The body’s process of reacting to changes to keep internal conditions stable (e.g., body temperature, blood sugar, or hydration). Unlike allostasis, which predicts needs before they arise, homeostasis acts as a feedback loop—correcting deviations after they occur. For example, if your body temperature drops, shivering generates heat to restore balance. It’s like a thermostat that only turns on the heater after the room gets cold, not before.


  • A situation where the brain sticks to an old belief or expectation so strongly that it ignores new information. For example, if you expect a loud noise to be dangerous every time, even when it’s harmless (like fireworks), your brain might overreact. This can contribute to anxiety or fear-based responses.

  • The network of nerves, the brain, and the spinal cord that control everything from movement to thoughts and organ function. It’s your body’s “communication hub,” constantly sending and receiving signals to manage daily activities, emotions, and survival responses.

  • The brain’s ability to handle new information, stress, or emotional demands before becoming overwhelmed.

    Consider a computer’s processing power. If your brain’s “storage” is full from stress, it can’t efficiently handle new challenges until it “clears space.”


  • Rhythmic, repetitive patterns in brain waves or bodily functions (e.g., heartbeats, breathing) that help systems work together. These rhythms are crucial for coordination, like how a metronome (that device that clicks back and forth) keeps musicians in sync.


  • The most important Your brain’s best guess on what will happen next, not necessarily how it will end. These predictions are based on past experiences and current clues, and they guide your actions by preparing your body and mind for the next step. Importantly, predictions focus on initial responses (e.g., the first moment of a door feeling stiff to open) rather than final outcomes (e.g., whether the door eventually opens).

    For example, someone might return to a toxic relationship because their brain predicts the initial comfort or excitement of reconnecting will continue. This focus on short-term predictive patterns can override awareness of long-term consequences, reinforcing behaviors like staying in harmful situations. The brain prioritizes familiar, early-stage rewards (e.g., a warm hug or reassuring words) over past negative outcomes (e.g., emotional harm), creating a cycle of repeated choices that feel predictable whether they lead to beneficial or harmful outcomes.

  • Predictive rigidity describes when the brain over‑weights prior expectations and fails to update them when new sensory or emotional evidence appears. This has been linked to anxiety, depression, and psychosis, where individuals persist with maladaptive expectations despite changing environments.

    For example, someone who has experienced repeated rejection might develop a rigid expectation that others will always judge or abandon them. Even when people later act kindly, their brain discounts this new information as unreliable, keeping the old prediction in place. This inflexibility, clinging to outdated expectations despite new evidence, is what predictive rigidity describes.

  • The moment your brain detects a mismatch between what it expected and what actually happens. This error signal helps you learn, like realizing a “warm” cup is actually hot and adjusting your grip to avoid burning yourself.


Glossary References

The definitions utilized in the glossary are based on current research in neuroscience and physiology from journals such as Neuron, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, and Trends in Neurosciences formatted in more accessible language.

Disclaimer

The information provided in this material is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should not rely on this information to make decisions about your health or medical care. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have.

Ashley Renee Colen