ArticlePLoS computational biology2023
Phi fluctuates with surprisal: An empirical pre-study for the synthesis of the free energy principle and integrated information theory.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Associative conditioning in gene regulatory network models increases integrative causal emergence.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Reflective analysis on empirical theories in consciousness.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- System Integrated Information.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Quantifying the Autonomy of Structurally Diverse Automata: A Comparison of Candidate Measures.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Review
- Predictive Neuronal Adaptation as a Basis for Consciousness.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2021Article
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4 authors.
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Abstract
The Free Energy Principle (FEP) and Integrated Information Theory (IIT) are two ambitious theoretical approaches. The first aims to make a formal framework for describing self-organizing and life-like systems in general, and the second attempts a mathematical theory of conscious experience based on the intrinsic properties of a system. They are each concerned with complementary aspects of the properties of systems, one with life and behavior, the other with meaning and experience, so combining them has potential for scientific value. In this paper, we take a first step towards such a synthesis by expanding on the results of an earlier published evolutionary simulation study, which show a relationship between IIT-measures and fitness in differing complexities of tasks. We relate a basic information theoretic measure from the FEP, surprisal, to this result, finding that the surprisal of simulated agents' observations is inversely related to the general increase in fitness and integration over evolutionary time. Moreover, surprisal fluctuates together with IIT-based consciousness measures in within-trial time. This suggests that the consciousness measures used in IIT indirectly depend on the relation between the agent and the external world, and that it should therefore be possible to relate them to the theoretical concepts used in the FEP. Lastly, we suggest a future approach for investigating this relationship empirically.
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