ReviewPhysics of life reviews2019
The hierarchically mechanistic mind: A free-energy formulation of the human psyche.
Review in Physics of life reviews, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 56 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.
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Who cites it
56 citing papers in PubMed, 221 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Beyond Local Domains: Connective Ontology in (Post-)Cognitive Sociology.Sociological research online · 2025Article
- Resilience phenotypes derived from an active inference account of allostasis.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Allostatic Interoceptive Overload Across Psychiatric and Neurological Conditions.Biological psychiatry · 2025Review
- rTMS combined with median nerve magnetic stimulation for prolonged disorders of consciousness following intracerebral hemorrhage: a randomized controlled trial protocol.Frontiers in neurology · 2025Article
- Eigenmodes of the deep unconscious: the neuropsychology of Jungian archetypes and psychedelic experience.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Review
- Active Inference in Psychology and Psychiatry: Progress to Date?Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- An Integrated theory of false insights and beliefs under psychedelics.Communications psychology · 2024Review
- The Nested States Model: An Empirical Framework for Integrating Brain and Mind.Journal of consciousness studies : controversies in science & the humanities · 2024Article
- A synergetic turn in cognitive neuroscience of brain diseases.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2024Review
- Collective intelligence: A unifying concept for integrating biology across scales and substrates.Communications biology · 2024Review
- Intrinsic timescales and predictive allostatic interoception in brain health and disease.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2024Review
- Feeling our place in the world: an active inference account of self-esteem.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2024Article
- Active Inference and Social Actors: Towards a Neuro-Bio-Social Theory of Brains and Bodies in Their Worlds.Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie · 2024Article
- The Limitations of Large Language Models for Understanding Human Language and Cognition.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2024Article
- I like therefore I can, and I can therefore I like: the role of self-efficacy and affect in active inference of allostasis.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2024Article
- Phi fluctuates with surprisal: An empirical pre-study for the synthesis of the free energy principle and integrated information theory.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Future medicine: from molecular pathways to the collective intelligence of the body.Trends in molecular medicine · 2023Review
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 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This article presents a unifying theory of the embodied, situated human brain called the Hierarchically Mechanistic Mind (HMM). The HMM describes the brain as a complex adaptive system that actively minimises the decay of our sensory and physical states by producing self-fulfilling action-perception cycles via dynamical interactions between hierarchically organised neurocognitive mechanisms. This theory synthesises the free-energy principle (FEP) in neuroscience with an evolutionary systems theory of psychology that explains our brains, minds, and behaviour by appealing to Tinbergen's four questions: adaptation, phylogeny, ontogeny, and mechanism. After leveraging the FEP to formally define the HMM across different spatiotemporal scales, we conclude by exploring its implications for theorising and research in the sciences of the mind and behaviour.
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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.