scholarly journals Keeping the Breath in Mind: Respiration, Neural Oscillations, and the Free Energy Principle

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asena Boyadzhieva ◽  
Ezgi Kayhan
Keyword(s):  
Free Energy ◽  
Gamma Oscillations ◽  
Sensory Level ◽  
Prediction Errors ◽  
Energy Principle ◽  
Inference Mechanism ◽  
Free Energy Principle ◽  
Physiological Regulation ◽  
Emotional Processes ◽  
Cortical Regions

Scientific interest in the brain and body interactions has been surging in recent years. One fundamental yet underexplored aspect of brain and body interactions is the link between the respiratory and the nervous systems. In this article, we give an overview of the emerging literature on how respiration modulates neural, cognitive and emotional processes. Moreover, we present a perspective linking respiration to the free-energy principle. We frame volitional modulation of the breath as an active inference mechanism in which sensory evidence is recontextualized to alter interoceptive models. We further propose that respiration-entrained gamma oscillations may reflect the propagation of prediction errors from the sensory level up to cortical regions in order to alter higher level predictions. Accordingly, controlled breathing emerges as an easily accessible tool for emotional, cognitive, and physiological regulation.

scholarly journals Keeping the Breath in Mind: Respiration, Neural Oscillations and the Free Energy Principle

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asena Boyadzhieva ◽  
Ezgi Kayhan
Keyword(s):  
Free Energy ◽  
Gamma Oscillations ◽  
Sensory Level ◽  
Prediction Errors ◽  
Energy Principle ◽  
Inference Mechanism ◽  
Free Energy Principle ◽  
Physiological Regulation ◽  
Emotional Processes ◽  
Cortical Regions

Scientific interest in the brain and body interactions has been surging in recent years. One fundamental yet underexplored aspect of brain and body interactions is the link between the respiratory and the nervous systems. In this article, we give an overview of the emerging literature on how respiration modulates neural, cognitive and emotional processes. Moreover, we present a perspective linking respiration to the free-energy principle. We frame volitional modulation of the breath as an active inference mechanism in which sensory evidence is recontextualized to alter interoceptive models. We further propose that respiration-entrained gamma oscillations may reflect the propagation of prediction errors from the sensory level up to cortical regions in order to alter higher level predictions. Accordingly, controlled breathing emerges as an easily accessible tool for emotional, cognitive, and physiological regulation.

scholarly journals The dark room problem in predictive processing and active inference, a legacy of cognitivism?

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Baltieri ◽  
Christopher Buckley
Keyword(s):  
Free Energy ◽  
Action Learning ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Prediction Errors ◽  
Active Inference ◽  
Energy Principle ◽  
Sensory Stimuli ◽  
Free Energy Principle ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Dark Room

The free energy principle describes cognitive functions such as perception, action, learning and attention in terms of surprisal minimisation. Under simplifying assumptions, agents are depicted as systems minimising a weighted sum of prediction errors encoding the mismatch between incoming sensations and an agent's predictions about such sensations. The ``dark room'' is defined as a state that an agent would occupy should it only look to minimise this sum of prediction errors. This (paradoxical) state emerges as the contrast between the attempts to describe the richness of human and animal behaviour in terms of surprisal minimisation and the trivial solution of a dark room, where the complete lack of sensory stimuli would provide the easiest way to minimise prediction errors, i.e., to be in a perfectly predictable state of darkness with no incoming stimuli. Using a process theory derived from the free energy principle, active inference, we investigate with an agent-based model the meaning of the dark room problem and discuss some of its implications for natural and artificial systems. In this set up, we propose that the presence of this paradox is primarily due to the long-standing belief that agents should encode accurate world models, typical of traditional (computational) theories of cognition.

Encultured minds, not error reduction minds

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Mirski ◽  
Mark H. Bickhard ◽  
David Eck ◽  
Arkadiusz Gut
Keyword(s):  
Free Energy ◽  
Error Reduction ◽  
Energy Principle ◽  
Free Energy Principle ◽  
Current Article

Abstract There are serious theoretical problems with the free-energy principle model, which are shown in the current article. We discuss the proposed model's inability to account for culturally emergent normativities, and point out the foundational issues that we claim this inability stems from.

scholarly journals Modelling ourselves: what the free energy principle reveals about our implicit notions of representation

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Sims ◽  
Giovanni Pezzulo
Keyword(s):  
Free Energy ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Energy Principle ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Free Energy Principle ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
Functional Aspects ◽  
Structural Content ◽  
Unified View

AbstractPredictive processing theories are increasingly popular in philosophy of mind; such process theories often gain support from the Free Energy Principle (FEP)—a normative principle for adaptive self-organized systems. Yet there is a current and much discussed debate about conflicting philosophical interpretations of FEP, e.g., representational versus non-representational. Here we argue that these different interpretations depend on implicit assumptions about what qualifies (or fails to qualify) as representational. We deploy the Free Energy Principle (FEP) instrumentally to distinguish four main notions of representation, which focus on organizational, structural, content-related and functional aspects, respectively. The various ways that these different aspects matter in arriving at representational or non-representational interpretations of the Free Energy Principle are discussed. We also discuss how the Free Energy Principle may be seen as a unified view where terms that traditionally belong to different ontologies—e.g., notions of model and expectation versus notions of autopoiesis and synchronization—can be harmonized. However, rather than attempting to settle the representationalist versus non-representationalist debate and reveal something about what representations are simpliciter, this paper demonstrates how the Free Energy Principle may be used to reveal something about those partaking in the debate; namely, what our hidden assumptions about what representations are—assumptions that act as sometimes antithetical starting points in this persistent philosophical debate.

scholarly journals Is free-energy minimisation the mark of the cognitive?

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Kiverstein ◽  
Matt Sims
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Free Energy ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Living Systems ◽  
Energy Principle ◽  
Free Energy Principle ◽  
Energy Minimisation ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Evolution Of Life ◽  
Mark Of The Cognitive

AbstractA mark of the cognitive should allow us to specify theoretical principles for demarcating cognitive from non-cognitive causes of behaviour in organisms. Specific criteria are required to settle the question of when in the evolution of life cognition first emerged. An answer to this question should however avoid two pitfalls. It should avoid overintellectualising the minds of other organisms, ascribing to them cognitive capacities for which they have no need given the lives they lead within the niches they inhabit. But equally it should do justice to the remarkable flexibility and adaptiveness that can be observed in the behaviour of microorganisms that do not have a nervous system. We should resist seeking non-cognitive explanations of behaviour simply because an organism fails to exhibit human-like feats of thinking, reasoning and problem-solving. We will show how Karl Friston’s Free-Energy Principle (FEP) can serve as the basis for a mark of the cognitive that avoids the twin pitfalls of overintellectualising or underestimating the cognitive achievements of evolutionarily primitive organisms. The FEP purports to describe principles of organisation that any organism must instantiate if it is to remain well-adapted to its environment. Living systems from plants and microorganisms all the way up to humans act in ways that tend in the long run to minimise free energy. If the FEP provides a mark of the cognitive, as we will argue it does, it mandates that cognition should indeed be ascribed to plants, microorganisms and other organisms that lack a nervous system.

Learned Uncertainty: A Free Energy Principle Perspective on Anxiety

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh McGovern ◽  
Alexander De Foe ◽  
Pantelis Leptourgos ◽  
Philip R. Corlett ◽  
Kavindu Bandara ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Free Energy ◽  
Anxiety Disorder ◽  
Biological System ◽  
Predictive Modelling ◽  
Generative Models ◽  
Generalized Anxiety ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Energy Principle ◽  
Free Energy Principle

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is among the world’s most prevalent psychiatric disorders. Affecting an eighth of the world’s population, it often manifests as persistent apprehension which is difficult to control. Despite its prevalence, neuroscientific efforts to understand the cognitive mechanisms of GAD remain sparse. This has resulted in a fractured theoretical landscape, lacking a unitary framework. While prior theories of anxiety describe the cognitive, affective and behavioral dimensions of anxiety, a unified theory is lacking. Here, we point out that postulates derived from the Free Energy Principle (FEP) may allow for a unified theory to emerge. We argue an approach focused on predictive modelling may afford opportunities to re-conceptualize anxiety within the framework of working generative models, rather than static beliefs. We suggest that a biological system—having had persistent uncertainty in its past—will form posteriors in line with uncertainty in its future, irrespective of whether that uncertainty is real. After discussing the FEP, we explain how anxiety develops through learning uncertainty before suggesting predictions for how the model can be tested.

Generalization of Fuels Swelling Data by Means of Linear Free Energy Principle

2014 ◽  
pp. 125-149
Author(s):  
Roman Makitra ◽  
Halyna Midyana ◽  
Liliya Bazylyak ◽  
Olena Palchykova
Keyword(s):  
Free Energy ◽  
Energy Principle ◽  
Free Energy Principle ◽  
Linear Free Energy
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