Category: Active Inference
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Nature heals
“Nature heals: An informational entropy account of self-organization and change in field psychotherapy“Highlights This paper reviews biophysical models of psychotherapeutic change based on synergetics and the free energy principle. These models suggest that introducing sensory surprise into the patient-therapist system can lead to self-organization and the formation of new attractor states, disrupting entrenched patterns of…
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Insight –> selection of ideas
“Insight and the selection of ideas” describes the mechanisms underlying Eureka heuristic, explained within an active inference framework. Perhaps it is no accident that insight moments accompany some of humanity’s most important discoveries in science, medicine, and art. Here we propose that feelings of insight play a central role in (heuristically) selecting an idea from…
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music and aging | Bayesian inference
“Understanding music and aging through the lens of Bayesian inference“ Bayesian inference has recently gained momentum in explaining music perception and aging. A fundamental mechanism underlying Bayesian inference is the notion of prediction. This framework could explain how predictions pertaining to musical (melodic, rhythmic, harmonic) structures engender action, emotion, and learning, expanding related concepts of music…
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Andy Clark “How the brain shapes reality”
Philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark challenges our conventional understanding of the mind’s interaction with the world. A great and entertaining lecture. I like the reflection with the reference to the weather forecast and how the forecast impacts “reality” perception. At the very least, understanding all those prediction-driven, precision-inflected, looping influences should bring us a…
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Bayesian model: prior–cost
Sohna and Jazayeri discuss in “Validating model-based Bayesian integration using prior–cost metamers” the two competing views on how humans make decisions under uncertainty. Bayesian decision theory (BDT) posits that humans optimize their behavior by establishing and integrating internal models of past sensory experiences (priors) and decision outcomes (cost functions). An alternative hypothesis posits that decisions…
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Representation of priors and decisions
The PLOS article by Marshall, Ruesseler, Hunt, O’Reilly “representation of priors and decisions in the human parietal cortex” discusses how both humans and animals actively sample the environment using their sensory organs, far from being passive recipients of sensory information. In rodents, active sampling processes include whisking and sniffing; in primates, the most important and…
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Dynamic task-belief is an integral part of decision-making
Natural decisions involve two seemingly separable processes: inferring the relevant task (task-belief) and performing the believed-relevant task. The assumed separability has led to the traditional practice of studying task-switching and perceptual decision-making individually. In this study, “Dynamic task-belief is an integral part of decision-making”, Xue, Kramer and Cohen used a novel paradigm to manipulate and…
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Generating meaning – AI²: predicting wor(l)ds
I would like to quote some of the great insights and statements from the opinion by G. Pezzulo, T. Parr, P. Cisek, A Clark, and K. Friston published in TICS: “Generating meaning: active inference and the scope and limits of passive AI“. Does ChatGPT ‘understand‘ what it talks about in the way we do, or…
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Interoception and Active Inference for mental health
Interoception refers to the process by which the nervous system senses and integrates signals originating from within the body, providing a momentary mapping of the body’s internal landscape and its relationship to the outside world. Active inference is based on the premise that afferent sensory input to the brain is constantly shaped and modified by…
