ArticleScientific reports2021
Simulating the computational mechanisms of cognitive and behavioral psychotherapeutic interventions: insights from active inference.
Article in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 42 citations in OpenAlex.
- The neurobiology of functional neurological disorders characterised by impaired awareness.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- The role of affective states in computational psychiatry.The international journal of neuropsychopharmacology · 2025Review
- The Association Between Doctor-Patient Conflict and Uncertainty Stress During Clinical Internships Among Medical Students: A Panel Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Active Inference in Psychology and Psychiatry: Progress to Date?Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- The conceptualisation and measurement of engagement in digital health.Internet interventions · 2024Article
- Friston, Free Energy, and Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Self-esteem depends on beliefs about the rate of change of social approval.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Tracking and changing beliefs during social interaction: Where computational psychiatry meets cognitive behavioral therapy.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Piloting the Update: The Use of Therapeutic Relationship for Change - A Free Energy Account.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Permutation Entropy as a Universal Disorder Criterion: How Disorders at Different Scale Levels Are Manifestations of the Same Underlying Principle.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Lower Levels of Directed Exploration and Reflective Thinking Are Associated With Greater Anxiety and Depression.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) leverages interactions between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. To deepen understanding of these interactions, we present a computational (active inference) model of CBT that allows formal simulations of interactions between cognitive interventions (i.e., cognitive restructuring) and behavioral interventions (i.e., exposure) in producing adaptive behavior change (i.e., reducing maladaptive avoidance behavior). Using spider phobia as a concrete example of maladaptive avoidance more generally, we show simulations indicating that when conscious beliefs about safety/danger have strong interactions with affective/behavioral outcomes, behavioral change during exposure therapy is mediated by changes in these beliefs, preventing generalization. In contrast, when these interactions are weakened, and cognitive restructuring only induces belief uncertainty (as opposed to strong safety beliefs), behavior change leads to generalized learning (i.e., "over-writing" the implicit beliefs about action-outcome mappings that directly produce avoidance). The individual is therefore equipped to face any new context, safe or dangerous, remaining in a content state without the need for avoidance behavior-increasing resilience from a CBT perspective. These results show how the same changes in behavior during CBT can be due to distinct underlying mechanisms; they predict lower rates of relapse when cognitive interventions focus on inducing uncertainty and on reducing the effects of automatic negative thoughts on behavior.
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