ArticleNeuroscience of consciousness2025
How do inner screens enable imaginative experience? Applying the free-energy principle directly to the study of conscious experience.
Article in Neuroscience of consciousness, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Dream content and slow waves benefit prey against predator in a video game confrontation.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The Awareness-First Theory: A Coherence Principle Underlying Active Inference and Physical Law.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- A Rosetta Stone hypothesis for neurophenomenology: mathematical predictions from predictive processing.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Conscious simultaneity with continuous motion: a measure-theoretic resolution of the hard problem.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Beyond representations: from active inference to active interference.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Towards an active inference account of deep meditative deconstruction.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Thoughtseeds: A Hierarchical and Agentic Framework for Investigating Thought Dynamics in Meditative States.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Conscious active inference I: A quantum model naturally implements the path integral needed for real-time planning and control.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2025Review
- The role of active inference in conscious awareness.PloS one · 2025Article
- Shared Protentions in Multi-Agent Active Inference.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Irruption and Absorption: A 'Black-Box' Framework for How Mind and Matter Make a Difference to Each Other.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Principled Limitations on Self-Representation for Generic Physical Systems.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Simultaneity of consciousness with physical reality: the key that unlocks the mind-matter problem.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
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6 authors.
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Abstract
This paper examines the constraints that the free-energy principle (FEP) places on possible model of consciousness, particularly models of attentional control and imaginative experiences, including episodic memory and planning. We first rehearse the classical and quantum formulations of the FEP, focusing on their application to multi-component systems, in which only some components interact directly with the external environment. In particular, we discuss the role of internal boundaries that have the structure of Markov blankets, and hence function as classical information channels between components. We then show how this formal structure supports models of attentional control and imaginative experience, with a focus on (i) how imaginative experience can employ the spatio-temporal and object-recognition reference frames employed in ordinary, non-imaginative experience and (ii) how imaginative experience can be internally generated but still surprising. We conclude by discussing the implementation, phenomenology, and phylogeny of imaginative experience, and the implications of the large state and trait variability of imaginative experience in humans.
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