Answering Schrödinger's question: A free-energy formulation

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 systematic research heuristic that supplies the biological, cognitive, and social sciences with a computationally tractable guide to discovery.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Physics of Life Reviews

• Publication date

  2017-02-10

• Fields of study

  Biology, Physics, Computer Science, Philosophy, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.plrev.2017.09.001PMID 29029962PMCID 5857288
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Autopoiesis, free energy, and the life–mind continuity thesis

  2018cited by this paper
• The Depressed Brain: An Evolutionary Systems Theory.

  2017influential reference
• How to Knit Your Own Markov Blanket

  2017cited by this paper
• Cancer as robust intrinsic state shaped by evolution: a key issues review

  2017cited by this paper
• Decoding early myelopoiesis from dynamics of core endogenous network

  2017cited by this paper
• Climbing Brain Levels of Organisation from Genes to Consciousness.

  2017cited by this paper
• UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Self-organization , free energy minimization , and optimal grip on a field of affordances

  2017cited by this paper
• Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind.

  2017influential reference
• After phrenology: neural reuse and the interactive brain

  2017cited by this paper
• Active Inference: A Process Theory

  2017cited by this paper
• Active inference, enactivism and the hermeneutics of social cognition

  2016cited by this paper
• Neural Elements for Predictive Coding

  2016cited by this paper
• Cultural Affordances: Scaffolding Local Worlds Through Shared Intentionality and Regimes of Attention

  2016influential reference
• The self-evidencing brain

  2016cited by this paper
• Characterization of Esophageal Physiology Using Mechanical State Analysis

  2016cited by this paper
• From cognitivism to autopoiesis: towards a computational framework for the embodied mind

  2016cited by this paper
• The anticipating brain is not a scientist: the free-energy principle from an ecological-enactive perspective

  2016cited by this paper
• Towards a Neuronal Gauge Theory

  2016cited by this paper
• Increased Event-Related Potentials and Alpha-, Beta-, and Gamma-Activity Associated with Intentional Actions

  2016cited by this paper
• Universal Darwinism As a Process of Bayesian Inference

  2016cited by this paper
• Emergence of system roles in normative neurodevelopment

  2015cited by this paper
• Self-Organization of Spatio-Temporal Hierarchy via Learning of Dynamic Visual Image Patterns on Action Sequences

  2015cited by this paper
• The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter

  2015cited by this paper
• Species of Realization and the Free Energy Principle

  2015cited by this paper
• Active inference, communication and hermeneutics

  2015cited by this paper
• Developmental mechanisms channeling cortical evolution.

  2015cited by this paper
• The Evolutionary Origins of Hierarchy

  2015cited by this paper
• Knowing one's place: a free-energy approach to pattern regulation

  2015cited by this paper
• A Natural History of Human Thinking

  2014cited by this paper
• Self-organized criticality as a fundamental property of neural systems

  2014cited by this paper
• Computational psychiatry: the brain as a phantastic organ.

  2014cited by this paper
• Sleep for cognitive enhancement

  2014cited by this paper
• Summing over trajectories of stochastic dynamics with multiplicative noise.

  2014cited by this paper
• The Enactive Approach

  2014cited by this paper
• Allocating structure to function: the strong links between neuroplasticity and natural selection

  2014cited by this paper
• Precise minds in uncertain worlds: predictive coding in autism.

  2014cited by this paper
• Hierarchical modular brain connectivity is a stretch for criticality.

  2014cited by this paper
• Emotional Valence and the Free-Energy Principle

  2013cited by this paper
• Life as we know it

  2013influential reference
• Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science.

  2013cited by this paper
• The Predictive Mind

  2013cited by this paper
• Dynamical Decomposition of Markov Processes without Detailed Balance

  2013cited by this paper
• The evolution of distributed association networks in the human brain.

  2013cited by this paper
• Structural and Functional Brain Networks: From Connections to Cognition

  2013cited by this paper
• Bridging developmental systems theory and evolutionary psychology using dynamic optimization.

  2013cited by this paper
• Evolutionary Systems Theory: A Unifying Meta-Theory of Psychological Science

  2012influential reference
• Canonical microcircuits for predictive coding.

  2012cited by this paper
• Principles of Brain Functioning: A Synergetic Approach to Brain Activity, Behavior and Cognition

  2012cited by this paper
• Psychological entropy: a framework for understanding uncertainty-related anxiety.

  2012cited by this paper
• Statistical physics of self-replication.

  2012cited by this paper
• A Free Energy Principle for Biological Systems.

  2012cited by this paper
• Natural selection. V. How to read the fundamental equations of evolutionary change in terms of information theory

  2012cited by this paper
• Stochastic thermodynamics, fluctuation theorems and molecular machines

  2012cited by this paper
• A Free Energy Principle for Biological Systems

  2012cited by this paper
• Free Energy, Value, and Attractors

  2011cited by this paper
• A New Unified Theory of Psychology

  2011cited by this paper
• Free Energy and Dendritic Self-Organization

  2011cited by this paper
• Representation of Reward Feedback in Primate Auditory Cortex

  2011cited by this paper
• Entropy production in irreversible systems described by a Fokker-Planck equation.

  2010cited by this paper
• Action and behavior: a free-energy formulation

  2010cited by this paper
• The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?

  2010influential reference
• Hierarchy and Dynamics of Neural Networks

  2010cited by this paper
• Embodied Inference : or “ I think therefore I am , if I am what I think ”

  2010cited by this paper
• On aims and methods of Ethology

  2010cited by this paper
• From drugs to deprivation: a Bayesian framework for understanding models of psychosis

  2009cited by this paper
• The Hypercycle: A principle of natural self-organization

  2009cited by this paper
• Global view of bionetwork dynamics: adaptive landscape.

  2009cited by this paper
• Escort Evolutionary Game Theory

  2009cited by this paper
• Predictive coding explains binocular rivalry: an epistemological review.

  2008cited by this paper
• A Hierarchy of Time-Scales and the Brain

  2008cited by this paper
• Emerging of Stochastic Dynamical Equalities and Steady State Thermodynamics from Darwinian Dynamics

  2008cited by this paper
• Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life

  2008cited by this paper
• On Variational Message Passing on Factor Graphs

  2007cited by this paper
• Random Dynamical Systems

  2006cited by this paper
• A free energy principle for the brain.

  2006cited by this paper
• Towards a unified science of cultural evolution.

  2006cited by this paper
• Maximum entropy production principle in physics, chemistry and biology

  2006cited by this paper
• Entropy production in nonequilibrium systems described by a Fokker-Planck equation

  2006cited by this paper
• A theory of cortical responses

  2005cited by this paper
• Functional ontologies for cognition: The systematic definition of structure and function

  2005cited by this paper
• Decision making, the P3, and the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine system.

  2005cited by this paper
• Laws in Darwinian evolutionary theory

  2005cited by this paper
• The Bayesian brain: the role of uncertainty in neural coding and computation.

  2004cited by this paper
• Stochastic Force Defined Evolution in Dynamical Systems

  2003cited by this paper
• Complex adaptive systems: Exploring the known, the unknown and the unknowable

  2002cited by this paper
• Evolution of networks

  2001cited by this paper
• A sociological theory of communication: The self-organization of the knowledge-cased society.

  2001cited by this paper
• The Challenge of Scientometrics: The Development, Measurement, and Self-Organization of Scientific Communications

  2001cited by this paper
• Evolutionary psychology: toward a unifying theory and a hybrid science.

  2001cited by this paper
• The Meme Machine

  1999cited by this paper
• Seeing smells: imaging olfactory learning in bees

  1999cited by this paper
• Minimum Message Length and Kolmogorov Complexity

  1999cited by this paper
• Predictive coding in the visual cortex: a functional interpretation of some extra-classical receptive-field effects.

  1999cited by this paper
• Ecosystems and the Biosphere as Complex Adaptive Systems

  1998cited by this paper
• Principles of brain functioning: A synergetic approach to brain activity, behavior, and cognition

  1997cited by this paper
• The brain has a body: adaptive behavior emerges from interactions of nervous system, body and environment.

  1997cited by this paper
• Dynamic patterns: The self-organization of brain and behavior

  1997cited by this paper
• Nonequilibrium Equality for Free Energy Differences

  1996cited by this paper
• A dynamical systems perspective on agent-environment interaction

  1996cited by this paper
• Without Miracles: Universal Selection Theory and the Second Darwinian Revolution

  1995cited by this paper

• Epistemic Normativity from an Evolutionary Epistemological Point of View

  2026cites this paper
• Does Consciousness Research Apply to Quantum Mechanics?

  2026cites this paper
• A Semiotic and Systems-Theoretic Framework for the Emergence of Consciousness

  2026cites this paper
• Evolutionary change and adaptation as non-equilibrium thermodynamic processes

  2026cites this paper
• Rethinking normativity with the free energy principle in light of interactivism

  2026cites this paper
• Navigating Uncertainty: Guiding Attention in Purposeful Human Activity Systems

  2026cites this paper
• Systema psyches: A temporal taxonomy of mental phenomena

  2026cites this paper
• Mind Everywhere: A Framework for Conceptualizing Goal-Directedness in Biology and Other Domains—Part One

  2026cites this paper
• Defining and finding lifelike entities with a lazy filter

  2025cites this paper
• EMI model: A scale free biophysical framework for human consciousness, cognition and behaviour

  2025cites this paper
• Constructing Representations

  2025cites this paper
• Markov Blanket Density and Free Energy Minimization

  2025cites this paper
• Binary option market manipulation by influencing belief dynamics

  2025cites this paper
• From uncertainty and entropy to coherence and consciousness

  2025cites this paper
• Resilience phenotypes derived from an active inference account of allostasis

  2025cites this paper
• Cognitive ecology of surprise in predator–prey interactions

  2025cites this paper
• As One and Many: Relating Individual and Emergent Group-Level Generative Models in Active Inference

  2025cites this paper
• Life, its origin, and its distribution: a perspective from the Conway-Kochen Theorem and the Free Energy Principle

  2025cites this paper
• From regularity to normativity: active inference and the origin of normative attitudes

  2025cites this paper
• BUNCH: A Hierarchical Filtering Algorithm for Identifying Persistent Entities in Interactive Particle Systems

  2025cites this paper
• A case for aneural cognition: E. coli and its cognitive repertoire

  2025cites this paper
• Improving the Minimum Free Energy Principle to the Maximum Information Efficiency Principle

  2025cites this paper
• Towards naturalized phenomenology: Dynamics of space-time clouds and power law of working memory

  2025cites this paper
• "Homo informatio".

  2025cites this paper
• From Fluctuations to Function: Unveiling the Role of Stochasticity in Life‐Like Systems

  2025cites this paper
• From artificial intelligence to active inference: the key to true AI and the 6G world brain [Invited]

  2025cites this paper
• Free Energy and Network Structure: Breaking Scale-Free Behaviour Through Information Processing Constraints

  2025cites this paper
• Nature heals: An informational entropy account of self-organization and change in field psychotherapy.

  2024cites this paper
• Free Energy Projective Simulation (FEPS): Active inference with interpretability

  2024cites this paper
• The Antagonism Hypothesis: A New View on the Emergence of Consciousness

  2024cites this paper
• Principles of Molecular Evolution: Concepts from Non-equilibrium Thermodynamics for the Multilevel Theory of Learning

  2024influential citation
• Forced Friends: Why the Free Energy Principle Is Not the New Hamilton’s Principle

  2024influential citation
• Measure for Measure: Operationalising Cognitive Realism

  2024cites this paper
• Nash Equilibria and Undecidability in Generic Physical Interactions - A Free Energy Perspective

  2024cites this paper
• Why collective behaviours self-organize to criticality: a primer on information-theoretic and thermodynamic utility measures

  2024cites this paper
• Making the Thermodynamic Cost of Active Inference Explicit

  2024cites this paper
• Dynamics of an information theoretic analog of two masses on a spring

  2024cites this paper
• Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across scales and substrates

  2024cites this paper
• Carving teleology at its joints

  2024cites this paper
• Constraining the Compression: Thermodynamic Depth and Composition

  2024cites this paper
• Premises for a digital twin of the Atlantic salmon in its world: Agency, robustness, subjectivity and prediction

  2024cites this paper
• Modeling Sustainable Resource Management using Active Inference

  2024cites this paper
• Forgetting ourselves in flow: an active inference account of flow states and how we experience ourselves within them

  2024cites this paper
• Active Inference and Social Actors: Towards a Neuro-Bio-Social Theory of Brains and Bodies in Their Worlds

  2024cites this paper
• Structural Realism About the Free Energy Principle, the Best of Both Worlds

  2024cites this paper
• Active Inference in Psychology and Psychiatry: Progress to Date?

  2024influential citation
• 'Snakes and ladders' in paleoanthropology: From cognitive surprise to skillfulness a million years ago.

  2024cites this paper
• Does nature learn? Information integration and rare events in systems of increasing complexity

  2024cites this paper
• Information, Entanglement, and Emergent Social Norms: Searching for ‘Normal’

  2024cites this paper
• The mechanics of evolution: Phylogeny, ontogeny, and adaptive priors.

  2024cites this paper
• On the minimal theory of consciousness implicit in active inference.

  2024cites this paper
• The social roots of self development: from a bodily to an intellectual interpersonal dialogue

  2023cites this paper
• Keeping it Real: Research Program Physicalism and the Free Energy Principle

  2023cites this paper
• Control Flow in Active Inference Systems—Part I: Classical and Quantum Formulations of Active Inference

  2023cites this paper
• Explanatory power by vagueness. Challenges to the strong prior hypothesis on hallucinations exemplified by the Charles-Bonnet-Syndrome.

  2023cites this paper
• Phi fluctuates with surprisal: An empirical pre-study for the synthesis of the free energy principle and integrated information theory

  2023cites this paper
• Conceptual Foundations of Physiological Regulation incorporating the Free Energy Principle and Self-Organized Criticality.

  2023cites this paper
• Myth of objectivity and the origin of symbols

  2023cites this paper
• Relative fluency (unfelt vs felt) in active inference.

  2023cites this paper
• Body as First Teacher: The Role of Rhythmic Visceral Dynamics in Early Cognitive Development

  2023cites this paper
• What is Balance? A Vital Mechano-Regulation Paradigm

  2023cites this paper
• Editorial: Bio A.I. - from embodied cognition to enactive robotics

  2023cites this paper
• A potential mechanism for Gibsonian resonance: behavioral entrainment emerges from local homeostasis in an unsupervised reservoir network

  2023cites this paper
• Designing explainable artificial intelligence with active inference: A framework for transparent introspection and decision-making

  2023cites this paper
• The inner screen model of consciousness: applying the free energy principle directly to the study of conscious experience

  2023cites this paper
• Toward a Bio-Organon: A model of interdependence between energy, information and knowledge in living systems

  2023cites this paper
• An Active-Inference Approach to Second-Person Neuroscience

  2023cites this paper
• A cultural-ecosocial systems view for psychiatry

  2023cites this paper
• Hierarchical network structure as the source of hierarchical dynamics (power-law frequency spectra) in living and non-living systems: how state-trait continua (body plans, personalities) emerge from first principles in biophysics.

  2023cites this paper
• Schrödinger’s What is Life?—Complexity, Cognition and the City

  2023cites this paper
• Grid-SD2E: A General Grid-Feedback in a System for Cognitive Learning

  2023cites this paper
• Surprisal From Language Models Can Predict ERPs in Processing Predicate-Argument Structures Only if Enriched by an Agent Preference Principle

  2023cites this paper
• Lifeworlds in pain: a principled method for investigation and intervention

  2023cites this paper
• Towards a strange interpretation of the Free Energy Principle.

  2023cites this paper
• Hierarchical network structure as the source of power-law frequency spectra (state-trait continua) in living and non-living systems: how physical traits and personalities emerge from first principles in biophysics

  2023influential citation
• Constrained disorder principle-based variability is fundamental for biological processes: Beyond biological relativity and physiological regulatory networks.

  2023cites this paper
• Insights from General Complexity Evolution for Our Current Situation

  2023cites this paper
• Incorporating (variational) free energy models into mechanisms: the case of predictive processing under the free energy principle

  2023cites this paper
• Canalization and plasticity in psychopathology.

  2022cites this paper
• Interpersonal attunement in social interactions: from collective psychophysiology to inter-personalized psychiatry and beyond

  2022cites this paper
• The free energy principle simplified 1 The free energy principle made simpler but not too simple

  2022cites this paper
• Dosis sola facit venenum: reconceptualising biological realism

  2022cites this paper
• The Physical Meaning of the Holographic Principle

  2022cites this paper
• The constrained disorder principle defines living organisms and provides a method for correcting disturbed biological systems

  2022cites this paper
• Repeating patterns: Predictive processing suggests an aesthetic learning role of the basal ganglia in repetitive stereotyped behaviors

  2022cites this paper
• Unification of free energy minimization, spatiotemporal energy, and dimension reduction models of V1 organization: Postnatal learning on an antenatal scaffold

  2022influential citation
• Integrated world modeling theory expanded: Implications for the future of consciousness

  2022cites this paper
• The hard problem of consciousness—A perspective from holistic philosophy

  2022cites this paper
• Hyperactivity of the default mode network in schizophrenia and free energy: A dialogue between Freudian theory of psychosis and neuroscience

  2022cites this paper
• The free energy principle induces neuromorphic development

  2022cites this paper
• Brain-Inspired Affective Empathy Computational Model and Its Application on Altruistic Rescue Task

  2022cites this paper
• Free energy: a user’s guide

  2022cites this paper
• Beauty and Uncertainty as Transformative Factors: A Free Energy Principle Account of Aesthetic Diagnosis and Intervention in Gestalt Psychotherapy

  2022cites this paper
• Spin glass systems as collective active inference

  2022cites this paper
• Intersubjectivity as an antidote to stress: Using dyadic active inference model of intersubjectivity to predict the efficacy of parenting interventions in reducing stress—through the lens of dependent origination in Buddhist Madhyamaka philosophy

  2022cites this paper
• Competency in Navigating Arbitrary Spaces as an Invariant for Analyzing Cognition in Diverse Embodiments

  2022cites this paper
• Memory for the Future: Psychodynamic Approach to Time and Self Through the Default Network

  2022cites this paper
• A New Look at Young Children’s Referential Informativeness

  2022cites this paper
• Therapeutic Alliance as Active Inference: The Role of Therapeutic Touch and Biobehavioural Synchrony in Musculoskeletal Care

  2022cites this paper
• Expecting some action: Predictive Processing and the construction of conscious experience

  2022cites this paper