The brain is designed to make accurate predictions.  This is its sole purpose according to general theories of brain function (“Bayesian” theories).  I will summarize a theory of how neurons predict, and show that the theory is itself able to explain and quantitatively predict biophysical properties of synapses and ion channels, including the decay times of IPSCs throughout the brain, and our finding that T-type calcium channels cause spikes in motor but not sensory thalamic neurons. The theory is distinguished by its effort to “take the neuron’s point of view,” whereas conventional approaches to “the neural code” are from the perspective of a scientific observer.  The two approaches are radically different, since the information in a neuron (in membrane voltage, for example) about its inputs and outputs tends to be radically different from the information of a scientist about its inputs and outputs.  I will demonstrate that the more accurately a neuron is predicting its sensory input, the more its spikes appear as random noise from the perspective of a scientist.