Free Energy and Virtual Reality in Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis: A Complexity Theory of Dreaming and Mental Disorder.
Frontiers in Psychology January 1, 2016 Jim Hopkins
The free energy neuroscience developed by Karl Friston parallels Freud's Project for a Scientific Psychology, including a virtual reality generator producing fictive prior beliefs akin to Freud's primary process. The brain minimizes free energy aroused by sensory and interoceptive impingements by constructing a model that increases accuracy in waking and reduces complexity in sleep through synaptic pruning and REM dreaming. Complexity partly reflects emotional conflict and trauma, and dreams and symptoms both reduce complexity from adverse amygdala-related arousals. Mental disorder arises from computational complexity and evolved complexity-reduction mechanisms like synaptic pruning. A dream fragment analysis shows complexity reduction resembling Bayesian model selection.