Journal article
Answering Schrödinger's question: A free-energy formulation
MJD Ramstead, PB Badcock, KJ Friston
Physics of Life Reviews | ELSEVIER | Published : 2018
Open access
Abstract
The free-energy principle (FEP) is a formal model of neuronal processes that is widely recognised in neuroscience as a unifying theory of the brain and biobehaviour. More recently, however, it has been extended beyond the brain to explain the dynamics of living systems, and their unique capacity to avoid decay. The aim of this review is to synthesise these advances with a meta-theoretical ontology of biological systems called variational neuroethology, which integrates the FEP with Tinbergen's four research questions to explain biological systems across spatial and temporal scales. We exemplify this framework by applying it to Homo sapiens, before translating variational neuroethology into a..
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Awarded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Funding Acknowledgements
Work on this article was supported by the Wellcome Trust (K. Friston; Ref: 088130/Z/09/Z) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (M.J.D. Ramstead). We thank Jelle Bruineberg, Nabil Bouizegarene, Axel Constant, Michael Kirchhoff, Laurence Kirmayer, Noah Moss-Brender, Jonathan St-Onge, Samuel Veissiere, Ishan Walpola, and Julian Xue, for helpful discussions and comments on earlier versions of this paper. Finally, we would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for invaluable guidance in describing these ideas.