The Predictive Brain
Reviewed August 2026
Have you ever watched a baby learning to walk? Yes, it's very cute watching them scoot along furniture, search out with their toes, reassess and take the stairs backwards crawling, manage the added impediment of the nappy and toddle with glee as they pick up confidence. What you're really watching is that magnificent new brain collating experiences (data), modifying patterns of movement accordingly, predicting the next challenge and how to surmount it and executing the plan. The new brain is practicing, learning and performing the task (in this case walking) based on previous experience. It is showcasing the way it works – by predicting outcomes.
It turns out that the way we, as adults, interact in the world is based on the same mechanism – our brain predicts the outcome of a situation based on previous experience. This is eminently clever, but it can trip us up too. You will have experienced this in a simple way if you've ever stepped off a gutter that turned out to be deeper than you'd anticipated. You might also have experienced it in a discussion where you pre-empt what someone else is going to say (based on your past experience) and you end up putting your foot in it because you anticipated incorrectly, and you're ultimately left wishing you'd listened to what was actually being said instead. As we've discussed before, the brain also keeps us safe from injuries by anticipating the risk of damage happening to our bodies (predicting outcome based on previous experience again) and gives us pain to prevent tissue damage (blog).
In each of these examples the brain's predictions may not be based on what is true. They are based on our perceptions of past events – and our interpretation and recall is not perfect. So sometimes the brain gets it wrong. In the link below Lorimer Moseley (Professor of Neurosciences) speaks about how his brain misinterpreted a scratch from a stick, mistaking it for a snake bite, and the extreme pain he experienced as a result. He also explains the neurology behind this phenomena, including a quick discussion about why we feel pain at all. It's worth putting aside 15 minutes to ponder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwd-wLdIHjs
As chiropractors, we focus on a particular glitch in this system.
Our brain collates several collections of data to predict, pre-program and direct our physical movements. These are:
• Previous experiences (of doing that movement before or from doing similar movements)
• Current sensory data from the body
- about what's going on inside the body
- and what's happening in the local environment
Chiropractors work directly with the messaging system between the joints of the body and the brain. The brain relies upon these messages to make real time predictions for movement. Previously recorded experiences of a particular movement are blended with real time feedback from the position sensors in the joints to anticipate (or predict) what movement is needed next. The brain then sends out the appropriate coordinated sequential muscle pattern directives to the muscles to get the job done (1).
Your brain is akin to the conductor of an orchestra – it's awesome! This symphony collapses though when the joints are not moving well ~ through poor posture, bad habits, quirky movement patterns due to old injuries etc. In this scenario when the joint is not moving well the feedback mechanism to the brain is impaired. The brain then doesn't have clear or complete data about that joint or the surrounding tissues (fake news 
) and it cannot plan or predict with as much accuracy. This can contribute to poor movement patterns and injury.
Chiropractic adjustments help to improve joint position sense so the brain gets better data from that joint and thus its predictions will be of greater quality (1). Both mobility and function are improved as the communication between the joints and the brain are optimised. This translates as less stiffness, less injuries and greater fluidity of movement.
Knowledge and communication. We can help you with both at the Adelaide Chiropractic Centre. Give us a call to make an appointment now on 8221 6262.