When an object is flying in a human's direction for one reason or another, the reaction is invariably to flinch. While long thought an instinctual reflex, a team of researchers at Radboud University in the Netherlands believe brains are constantly viewing lives in fast-forward, playing out actions in an individual's head before they happen. For the vast majority of humans, life consists of navigating and responding to environments that are in constant flux, and brains compensate for this by constantly making predictions about what's going to happen. That's been known for some time, but it was assumed these predictions were purely associative — for instance, if an individual sees a plate of chips, a brain predicts there will be battered cod, or a hamburger, nearby. Now however, a study has suggested brains instead predict motion. The