ReviewBrain structure & function2013
Predictions not commands: active inference in the motor system.
Review in Brain structure & function, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 303 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
303 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 789 citations in OpenAlex.
- The cerebellum plays more than one role in the dysregulation of appetite: Review of structural evidence from typical and eating disorder populations.Brain and behavior · 2023Pooled it
- The rediscovered motor-related area 55b emerges as a core hub of music perception.Communications biology · 2022Pooled it
- Effects of motor imagery in recovery of nerve blockade in patients undergoing total knee replacement under spinal anesthesia: a randomized prospective controlled study.Journal of orthopaedic surgery and research · 2025Trial
- Noradrenergic deficits contribute to apathy in Parkinson's disease through the precision of expected outcomes.PLoS computational biology · 2022Trial
- Shared mechanisms underlie mental imagery and motor planning.Scientific reports · 2022Trial
- An examination of active inference in autistic adults using immersive virtual reality.Scientific reports · 2021Trial
- Functional harmonics reveal multi-dimensional basis functions underlying cortical organization.Cell reports · 2021Trial
- Active inference under visuo-proprioceptive conflict: Simulation and empirical results.Scientific reports · 2020Trial
- Brain Dynamics Underlying Reaching Movements Under Uncertainty.Human brain mapping · 2026Article
- Maternal Gait as a Potential Scaffold for Rhythm Processing: A Predictive Processing Network Model.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Neural Evidence for Action-Related Somatosensory Predictions.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2026Article
- Predictive Processing in Sport and Exercise Science: A Scoping Review and Theoretical Overview.Sports medicine - open · 2026Review
- Toward a Predictive Coding Account of Hypnotic Hypoalgesia: Integrating EEG Oscillations and Somatosensory Evoked Responses.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- The primate claustrum as a hub for precision weighting of prediction errors across the cortical hierarchy.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Ontology-constrained multi-LLM scoring of hypothesis support in the predictive processing literature.Research square · 2026Article
- Differentiation of cortical areas: effects of free energy minimization with broken symmetry.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2026Article
- Interplay Between Vertical and Horizontal Schemes of Computation: From Bayesian Inference to Quantum Logic via Gluing Boolean Algebras.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Limb apraxia and active inference in the visuomotor pathways.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Active inference and speech motor control.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Somatosensory input drives membrane potential dynamics in motor cortex during voluntary limb movement.PLoS biology · 2026Article
243 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The descending projections from motor cortex share many features with top-down or backward connections in visual cortex; for example, corticospinal projections originate in infragranular layers, are highly divergent and (along with descending cortico-cortical projections) target cells expressing NMDA receptors. This is somewhat paradoxical because backward modulatory characteristics would not be expected of driving motor command signals. We resolve this apparent paradox using a functional characterisation of the motor system based on Helmholtz's ideas about perception; namely, that perception is inference on the causes of visual sensations. We explain behaviour in terms of inference on the causes of proprioceptive sensations. This explanation appeals to active inference, in which higher cortical levels send descending proprioceptive predictions, rather than motor commands. This process mirrors perceptual inference in sensory cortex, where descending connections convey predictions, while ascending connections convey prediction errors. The anatomical substrate of this recurrent message passing is a hierarchical system consisting of functionally asymmetric driving (ascending) and modulatory (descending) connections: an arrangement that we show is almost exactly recapitulated in the motor system, in terms of its laminar, topographic and physiological characteristics. This perspective casts classical motor reflexes as minimising prediction errors and may provide a principled explanation for why motor cortex is agranular.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.