ReviewPLoS computational biology2013
Information and efficiency in the nervous system--a synthesis.
Review in PLoS computational biology, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 86 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
86 citing papers in PubMed.
- Increased firing rates monotonically expand neuronal coding bandwidth.Biological cybernetics · 2026Article
- Network-specific metabolic cost of functional connectivity in the human brain.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Review
- Differentiation of cortical areas: effects of free energy minimization with broken symmetry.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2026Article
- Categorization is 'baked' into the brain.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Long-run electricity consumption in computing: Exponential growth followed by stabilization due to efficiency gains.iScience · 2026Article
- Direct energy consumption by inhibitory GABAFrontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Constrained Hebbian learning supports efficient representational allocation under structural constraints.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2026Article
- A Rosetta Stone hypothesis for neurophenomenology: mathematical predictions from predictive processing.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Biophysical properties of the membrane influence spike initiation dynamics and neuronal excitability: a focus on Kv1 channels in myelinated axons.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Effect of a Plant-Based Nootropic Supplement on Perceptual Decision-Making and Brain Network Interdependencies: A Randomised, Double-Blinded, and Placebo-Controlled Study.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- How do inner screens enable imaginative experience? Applying the free-energy principle directly to the study of conscious experience.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Article
- Brain energy metabolism as an underlying basis of slow and fast cognitive phenotypes in honeybees.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Making the Thermodynamic Cost of Active Inference Explicit.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Toward the Bayesian brain: a generative model of information transmission by vestibular sensory neurons.Frontiers in neurology · 2024Article
- Brain network and energy imbalance in Parkinson's disease: linking ATP reduction andFrontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2024Review
- Bio-Inspired Intelligent Systems: Negotiations between Minimum Manifest Task Entropy and Maximum Latent System Entropy in Changing Environments.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- A functional account of stimulation-based aerobic glycolysis and its role in interpreting BOLD signal intensity increases in neuroimaging experiments.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Experimental validation of the free-energy principle with in vitro neural networks.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Free energy and inference in living systems.Interface focus · 2023Article
26 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.
Funding
Abstract
In systems biology, questions concerning the molecular and cellular makeup of an organism are of utmost importance, especially when trying to understand how unreliable components--like genetic circuits, biochemical cascades, and ion channels, among others--enable reliable and adaptive behaviour. The repertoire and speed of biological computations are limited by thermodynamic or metabolic constraints: an example can be found in neurons, where fluctuations in biophysical states limit the information they can encode--with almost 20-60% of the total energy allocated for the brain used for signalling purposes, either via action potentials or by synaptic transmission. Here, we consider the imperatives for neurons to optimise computational and metabolic efficiency, wherein benefits and costs trade-off against each other in the context of self-organised and adaptive behaviour. In particular, we try to link information theoretic (variational) and thermodynamic (Helmholtz) free-energy formulations of neuronal processing and show how they are related in a fundamental way through a complexity minimisation lemma.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.