ReviewTrends in cognitive sciences2018
Hierarchical Active Inference: A Theory of Motivated Control.
Review in Trends in cognitive sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 131 papers.
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Who cites it
131 citing papers in PubMed.
- Noradrenergic deficits contribute to apathy in Parkinson's disease through the precision of expected outcomes.PLoS computational biology · 2022Trial
- 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
- Learning to infer transitively on a mental line in premotor cortex.Science advances · 2026Article
- Active inference with reusable state-dependent value profiles.Biological cybernetics · 2026Article
- Inferential planning in the frontal cortex.Cell reports · 2026Article
- Curiosity-driven development of action and language in robots through self-exploration.Science advances · 2026Article
- Embodied Neuropsychodynamics of the Relational Self Across Space and Time: An Integrative Narrative Review.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- Limb apraxia and active inference in the visuomotor pathways.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Review
- The effects of different sports activities on body scheme in preschoolers and primary school children: an experimental and theoretical analysis.Journal of physiological anthropology · 2026Article
- Human foraging strategies flexibly adapt to resource distribution and time constraints.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Reconceptualizing the sense of agency: expanding Decision-level Agency as mental action in the era of generative AI.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Motor and operative intentionality in computational phenomenology: from shallow to deep active inference models.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Towards an active inference account of deep meditative deconstruction.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Learning to attenuate myself: a predictive processing account of body-scan meditation and the dissolution of bodily boundaries.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- From intention-behavior gap to dietary affordances: an active inference account of sustainable eating.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- From self-organizing systems to subjective temporal extension.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- The active construction of past episodes.Translational neuroscience · 2026Article
- Article
- Self-Reflection Protects Behavior from Volatile Beliefs Linked to Paranoia.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
- Insular cortex predictions regulate glucose homeostasis.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
71 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Motivated control refers to the coordination of behaviour to achieve affectively valenced outcomes or goals. The study of motivated control traditionally assumes a distinction between control and motivational processes, which map to distinct (dorsolateral versus ventromedial) brain systems. However, the respective roles and interactions between these processes remain controversial. We offer a novel perspective that casts control and motivational processes as complementary aspects - goal propagation and prioritization, respectively - of active inference and hierarchical goal processing under deep generative models. We propose that the control hierarchy propagates prior preferences or goals, but their precision is informed by the motivational context, inferred at different levels of the motivational hierarchy. The ensuing integration of control and motivational processes underwrites action and policy selection and, ultimately, motivated behaviour, by enabling deep inference to prioritize goals in a context-sensitive way.
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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.