Topic: change-point detection surprise

‘Surprise’ is used in the neurosciences to explain a multitude of phenomena: from memory-modification and adaptive learning to attentional shift and exploration. However, different studies refer to different definitions of ‘surprise’, and it remains unclear how these different definitions relate (1) to each other and (2) to different phenomena attributed to surprise. To address the 1st issue, we identify 10 mathematical definitions of surprise in a unifying framework and show how they relate to each other. Importantly, we classify these definitions into four main categories: (i) ‘prediction s