A great TED talk.
I like the way he says that the brain canāt hear anything, see anything, etc. but gets sensory information from the sense organs and tries to put it together. However, the brainās basis of perception, instead of relying largely on sensory signals coming into the brain, it relies as much, or more on perceptive predictions, generating our version of reality.
Clearly our mind creates a mental model of the world, based on sensory input, and I think this is what the suttas describe. Iām not sure about the word āhallucinatesā though, it implies that our mental model has no correlation to sensory input.
Iām also bit concerned about this word choiceā¦ But what he describes as hallucinations is something similar to what, I think, in EBT is called abhisaį¹ khÄroti - to make up, to construct or to fabricate something out of raw materials. Itās not necessarily false or fake but just points to the fact that a sense of reality is an active product of a mind which has some internal ābaggageā.
I wouldnāt use the word āhallucinationā either, but he doesnāt appear to have a Buddhist orientation. However, he does differentiate a controlled hallucination from un uncontrolled. I might consider it as more of subjective perception.