ArticleBehavioural brain research2020
Active inference, stressors, and psychological trauma: A neuroethological model of (mal)adaptive explore-exploit dynamics in ecological context.
Article in Behavioural brain research, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 65 citations in OpenAlex.
- The neurobiology of functional neurological disorders characterised by impaired awareness.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Environmental Exposures and Computational Mechanisms in Psychosis Risk: Insights from a Multi-Site Cohort.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2026Article
- Errors or Adaptations? A Critical Review of Predictive Processing in Psychiatry.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- The phantastic organ: predictive processing in the brain.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- A predictive processing framework for body-oriented trauma intervention: a hypothesis illustrated by Body Connect Therapy.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Metacognitive Feelings: A Predictive-Processing Perspective.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Review
- A Computational Account of the Development and Evolution of Psychotic Symptoms.Biological psychiatry · 2025Review
- The role of active inference in conscious awareness.PloS one · 2025Article
- How do inner screens enable imaginative experience? Applying the free-energy principle directly to the study of conscious experience.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Article
- Body as First Teacher: The Role of Rhythmic Visceral Dynamics in Early Cognitive Development.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Article
- Active Inference in Psychology and Psychiatry: Progress to Date?Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Enhancing Agency in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Therapies Through Sensorimotor Technologies.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Article
- Gesture sonification for enhancing agency: an exploratory study on healthy participants.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Cellular mechanisms of cooperative context-sensitive predictive inference.Current research in neurobiology · 2024Review
- Narrative as active inference: an integrative account of cognitive and social functions in adaptation.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Foraging for the self: Environment selection for agency inference.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2023Article
- Modeling and controlling the body in maladaptive ways: an active inference perspective on non-suicidal self-injury behaviors.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2023Article
- How childhood maltreatment alters perception and cognition - the predictive processing account of borderline personality disorder.Psychological medicine · 2022Review
- How Stress Can Change Our Deepest Preferences: Stress Habituation Explained Using the Free Energy Principle.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
This paper offers a formal account of emotional inference and stress-related behaviour, using the notion of active inference. We formulate responses to stressful scenarios in terms of Bayesian belief-updating and subsequent policy selection; namely, planning as (active) inference. Using a minimal model of how creatures or subjects account for their sensations (and subsequent action), we deconstruct the sequences of belief updating and behaviour that underwrite stress-related responses - and simulate the aberrant responses of the sort seen in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Crucially, the model used for belief-updating generates predictions in multiple (exteroceptive, proprioceptive and interoceptive) modalities, to provide an integrated account of evidence accumulation and multimodal integration that has consequences for both motor and autonomic responses. The ensuing phenomenology speaks to many constructs in the ecological and clinical literature on stress, which we unpack with reference to simulated inference processes and accompanying neuronal responses. A key insight afforded by this formal approach rests on the trade-off between the epistemic affordance of certain cues (that resolve uncertainty about states of affairs in the environment) and the consequences of epistemic foraging (that may be in conflict with the instrumental or pragmatic value of 'fleeing' or 'freezing'). Starting from first principles, we show how this trade-off is nuanced by prior (subpersonal) beliefs about the outcomes of behaviour - beliefs that, when held with unduly high precision, can lead to (Bayes optimal) responses that closely resemble PTSD.
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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.