The Overfitted Brain

Erik Hoel's 'The Overfitted Brain' presents an information-theoretic perspective on brain function, proposing that sleep, dreaming, and internal noise serve to prevent overfitting to recent experiences and improve generalization.

Hoel links learning dynamics and statistical modeling concepts to biological mechanisms, suggesting that the brain actively injects perturbations to maintain flexible, robust representations.

The book integrates computational neuroscience, machine learning analogies, and empirical observations about sleep and dreaming.

It offers a theoretical account for why organisms benefit from internally generated variability and how that shapes cognition.

Hoel's ideas inform discussions of psychedelics by framing altered-state noise and representational changes within broader learning principles.