Active inference, free-energy and the Bayesian brain

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Active inference, free-energy and the Bayesian brain Karl Friston1* 1 University College London, United Kingdom This presentation will consider action, perception and cognition as emergent phenomena under one unifying perspective. This Helmholtzian perspective regards the brain as a (generative) model of its environment. The imperative for any brain then becomes to maximise the (Bayesian) evidence for its model of the world. We will see that this is not just mandated for the brain but for any self-organizing system that resists a natural tendency to disorder in a changing environment. More specifically, maximizing evidence (or minimizing surprise) leads, in a fairly straightforward way, to an understanding of action as active inference and perception in terms of predictive coding (cf, the Bayesian brain hypothesis). These are two aspects of exactly the same principle; namely, the minimization of a quantity (free-energy) that bounds the log-evidence for models of our world. This principle can be derived from our very existence. Put simply, we sample the world to maximise the evidence for our existence. I will try to illustrate the basic idea by presenting examples of perceptual categorization, learning and action-observation that speak to current issues in cognitive neuroscience. Keywords: Bayesian brain hypothesis, free-energy Conference: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011. Presentation Type: Keynote Lecture Topic: Keynote Lectures Citation: Friston K (2011). Active inference, free-energy and the Bayesian brain. Conference Abstract: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00005 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 02 Nov 2011; Published Online: 08 Nov 2011. * Correspondence: Dr. Karl Friston, University College London, London, United Kingdom, k.friston@ucl.ac.uk Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Karl Friston Google Karl Friston Google Scholar Karl Friston PubMed Karl Friston Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.