ReviewNeuroscience and biobehavioral reviews2016
Active inference and learning.
Review in Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 239 papers.
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
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Who cites it
239 citing papers in PubMed.
- Modeling other minds: Bayesian inference explains human choices in group decision-making.Science advances · 2019Trial
- The Game of Self: Identity and Experience as Active Inference.Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc · 2026Article
- Inferential planning in the frontal cortex.Cell reports · 2026Article
- Active inference and artificial reasoning.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The Free Energy Principle and Free Markets.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Predictive Processing in Sport and Exercise Science: A Scoping Review and Theoretical Overview.Sports medicine - open · 2026Review
- Autonomy in learning: Predictability modulates the beneficial effect of choice on memory.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- An effort recalibration framework for digital media use and cognition.Nature human behaviour · 2026Review
- Article
- Curiosity-driven development of action and language in robots through self-exploration.Science advances · 2026Article
- AI Agents Are Coming: 5-Stage Taxonomy of Language-Based AI Systems for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Counseling.JMIR mental health · 2026Article
- Quantifying mutual hesitation and identifying kinematic predictors in near-collision avoidance in walking.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Article
- Errors or Adaptations? A Critical Review of Predictive Processing in Psychiatry.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Model predictive task sampling for efficient and robust adaptation.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Emotions Are Folk Concepts in a Predicting Brain.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- Interplay Between Vertical and Horizontal Schemes of Computation: From Bayesian Inference to Quantum Logic via Gluing Boolean Algebras.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Active inference and speech motor control.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- Functional connectivity-based attractor dynamics of the human brain in rest, task, and disease.eLife · 2026Article
- Agentic Finance: An Adaptive Inference Framework for Bounded-Rational Investing Agents.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
179 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
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
This paper offers an active inference account of choice behaviour and learning. It focuses on the distinction between goal-directed and habitual behaviour and how they contextualise each other. We show that habits emerge naturally (and autodidactically) from sequential policy optimisation when agents are equipped with state-action policies. In active inference, behaviour has explorative (epistemic) and exploitative (pragmatic) aspects that are sensitive to ambiguity and risk respectively, where epistemic (ambiguity-resolving) behaviour enables pragmatic (reward-seeking) behaviour and the subsequent emergence of habits. Although goal-directed and habitual policies are usually associated with model-based and model-free schemes, we find the more important distinction is between belief-free and belief-based schemes. The underlying (variational) belief updating provides a comprehensive (if metaphorical) process theory for several phenomena, including the transfer of dopamine responses, reversal learning, habit formation and devaluation. Finally, we show that active inference reduces to a classical (Bellman) scheme, in the absence of ambiguity.
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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.