Neuronal cell-type and circuit basis for visual predictive processing

Bayesian Brain theory suggests brain utilises predictive processing framework to interpret the noisy world. Predictive processing is essential to perception, action, cognition and psychiatric disease, but underlying neural circuit mechanisms remain undelineated. Here we show the neuronal cell-type and circuit basis for visual predictive processing in awake, head-fixed mice during self-initiated running. Preceding running, vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP)-expressing inhibitory interneurons (INs) in primary visual cortex (V1) are robustly activated in absence of structured visual stimuli. This pre-running activation is mediated via distal top-down projections from frontal, parietal and retrosplenial areas known for motion planning, but not local excitatory inputs associated with the bottom-up pathway. Somatostatin (SST) INs show pre-running suppression and post-running activation, indicating a VIP-SST motif. Differential VIP-SST peri-running dynamics anisotropically suppress neighbouring pyramidal (Pyr) neurons, preadapting Pyr neurons to the incoming running. Our data delineate key neuron types and circuit elements of predictive processing brain employs in action and perception.

Motor development: from dynamical system approach to a neo-developmental application

The aim of this study was to present a dynamical view of motor development and a few factors affecting the developmental course and rate of motor changes. The acquisition of motor skills involves one’s exploration of many body segmental configurations, followed by the selection of those that are most useful to achieve the task demands. Exploration and selection are attained through searching and the evolution and dissolution of the stable dynamical regions of coordination modes for a given task. Development then involves an interaction between the learner and environment, dissolving relatively successful dynamics in search of even more rewarding dynamics for the new task, based upon repetitive perception-action cycles. Developmental changes can occur naturally, but can also be deterministically influenced by, for example, teachers enhancing the probability of systematic change in performance over time. This influence can be through the planned introduction of interventions and providing information that drives the learner to transition to stable modes of performance and search for new body configuration dynamics required for the new task. Teachers play an important role in guiding learners through this complex developmental journey.

Resonating Minds—Emergent Collaboration Through Hierarchical Active Inference

Working together on complex collaborative tasks requires agents to coordinate their actions. Doing this explicitly or completely prior to the actual interaction is not always possible nor sufficient. Agents also need to continuously understand the current actions of others and quickly adapt their own behavior appropriately. Here we investigate how efficient, automatic coordination processes at the level of mental states (intentions, goals), which we call belief resonance, can lead to collaborative situated problem-solving. We present a model of hierarchical active inference for collaborative agents (HAICA). It combines efficient Bayesian Theory of Mind processes with a perception–action system based on predictive processing and active inference. Belief resonance is realized by letting the inferred mental states of one agent influence another agent’s predictive beliefs about its own goals and intentions. This way, the inferred mental states influence the agent’s own task behavior without explicit collaborative reasoning. We implement and evaluate this model in the Overcooked domain, in which two agents with varying degrees of belief resonance team up to fulfill meal orders. Our results demonstrate that agents based on HAICA achieve a team performance comparable to recent state-of-the-art approaches, while incurring much lower computational costs. We also show that belief resonance is especially beneficial in settings where the agents have asymmetric knowledge about the environment. The results indicate that belief resonance and active inference allow for quick and efficient agent coordination and thus can serve as a building block for collaborative cognitive agents.

Active strategies for multisensory conflict suppression in the virtual hand illusion

The perception of our body in space is flexible and manipulable. The predictive brain hypothesis explains this malleability as a consequence of the interplay between incoming sensory information and our body expectations. However, given the interaction between perception and action, we might also expect that actions would arise due to prediction errors, especially in conflicting situations. Here we describe a computational model, based on the free-energy principle, that forecasts involuntary movements in sensorimotor conflicts. We experimentally confirm those predictions in humans using a virtual reality rubber-hand illusion. Participants generated movements (forces) towards the virtual hand, regardless of its location with respect to the real arm, with little to no forces produced when the virtual hand overlaid their physical hand. The congruency of our model predictions and human observations indicates that the brain-body is generating actions to reduce the prediction error between the expected arm location and the new visual arm. This observed unconscious mechanism is an empirical validation of the perception–action duality in body adaptation to uncertain situations and evidence of the active component of predictive processing.

Interlimb Coordination of Rhythm and Beat Performance

Interlimb coordination is critical to the successful performance of simple activities in everyday life and it depends on precisely timed perception-action coupling. This is particularly true in music-making, where performers often use body-movements to keep the beat while playing more complex rhythmic patterns. In the current study, we used a musical rhythmic paradigm of simultaneous rhythm/beat performance to examine how interlimb coordination between voice, hands and feet is influenced by the inherent hierarchical relationship between rhythm and beat. Sixty right-handed participants—musicians, amateur-musicians and non-musicians—performed three short rhythmic patterns while keeping the underlying beat, using 12 different combinations of voice, hands and feet. Results revealed a bodily hierarchy with five levels 1) left foot, 2) right foot, 3) left hand, 4) right hand, 5) voice, implying a more precise task execution when the rhythm was performed with a limb occupying a higher level in the hierarchy than the limb keeping the beat. The notion of a bodily hierarchy implies that the role assigned to the different limbs is key to successful interlimb coordination: the performance level of a specific limb combination differs considerably, depending on which limb holds the supporting role of the beat and which limb holds the conducting role of the rhythm. Although performance generally increased with expertise, the evidence of the hierarchy was consistent in all three expertise groups. The effects of expertise further highlight how perception influences action: Embracing a predictive coding view, we discuss the possibility that musicians’ more robust metrical prediction models make it easier for musicians to attenuate prediction errors than non-musicians. Overall, the study suggests a comprehensive bodily hierarchy, showing how interlimb coordination is influenced by hierarchical principles in both perception and action.

The Acquisition of Culturally Patterned Attention Styles Under Active Inference

This paper presents an active inference based simulation study of visual foraging. The goal of the simulation is to show the effect of the acquisition of culturally patterned attention styles on cognitive task performance, under active inference. We show how cultural artefacts like antique vase decorations drive cognitive functions such as perception, action and learning, as well as task performance in a simple visual discrimination task. We thus describe a new active inference based research pipeline that future work may employ to inquire on deep guiding principles determining the manner in which material culture drives human thought, by building and rebuilding our patterns of attention.

Ecological Values Theory: Beyond Conformity, Goal-Seeking, and Rule-Following in Action and Interaction

Values have long been considered important for psychology but are frequently characterized as beliefs, goals, rules, or norms. Ecological values theory locates them, not in people or in objects, but in ecosystem relationships and the demands those relationships place on fields of action within the system. To test the worth of this approach, we consider skilled coordination tasks in social psychology (e.g., negotiating disagreements, synchrony and asynchrony in interactions, and selectivity in social learning) and perception-action (e.g., driving vehicles and carrying a child). Evidence suggests that a diverse array of values (e.g., truth, social solidarity, justice, flexibility, safety, and comfort) work in a cooperative tension to guide actions. Values emerge as critical constraints on action that differ from goals, rules, and natural laws, and yet provide the larger context in which they can function effectively. Prospects and challenges for understanding values and their role in action, including theoretical and methodological issues, are considered.