It is widely agreed that understanding the brain involves understanding its computations. What do we actually mean by computation? (Starting point: "computation" and "large language models" are not synonyms.) In this seminar we will get a foundation in what computation is, specifically in the context of what brains do; we will then delve into literature about two key features of the brain's computations, memory and prediction, with a focus on language. The last portion of the class will look at recent literature on these topics -- what questions are people asking, and what kinds of models are they proposing?