The Knowledge Gap

How creating a gap stimulates learning.

The concept of a knowledge gap is very simple but sometimes still under used. It is the natural method by which the brain works so we would all be well advised to use this in stimulating learning.

Karl Friston is a big name in neuroscience, really big. He developed the mathematics that ensure brain scanners work, developing what sound like abstruse and complex concepts to the layman such as: statistical parametric mapping, voxel-based morphometry, dynamic causal modelling, variation filtering, and dynamic expectation maximisation. See what I mean – but MRI scanning would not be where it is without Karl Friston and these analytical tools.

One of his big theories, unknown to the general public, and even in academics considered an exotic theory, is that of what he calls the Free Energy Principle. Wired did a nice article on him and the free energy principle quaintly noting how he tends to confuse even academic or intellectual audiences. This is considered a grand theory - a guiding principle for all things in the universe. Yup, that big. One key aspect of the free energy principle is something called surprise minimisation.