Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
August 1, 2026
Andrew W. Corcoran, Andrew M. Haun, Reinder Dorman et al.
As neuroscientific theories of consciousness continue to proliferate, the need to assess their similarities and differences - as well as their predictive and explanatory power - becomes ever more pressing. Recently, a number of structured adversarial collaborations have been devised to test the competing predictions of several candidate theories of consciousness. In this review, we compare and...
July 31, 2026
Karl Friston
This chapter explores the theoretical intersection of artificial consciousness and the free energy principle, providing a rigorous physical framework for understanding sentience. It defines the “self” through the concept of Markov blankets and the process of self-evidencing, where autonomous systems minimise variational free energy to maintain their individuation from the environment. By...
arXiv (Cornell University)
May 15, 2026
Jonas Mago, Edmundo Lopez-Sola, Jakub Vohryzek et al.
Minimal Phenomenal Experiences (MPEs) are states of consciousness in which wakefulness is preserved but phenomenal content is low or absent. The Entropic Brain Hypothesis (EBH) is a model of conscious processes that regards the entropy of spontaneous brain activity as a marker of 'phenomenal richness', exemplified by high-content psychedelic experiences (HCPEs). Yet recent human neuroimaging...
Physics of Life Reviews
March 1, 2026
Christopher J. Whyte, Andrew W. Corcoran, Jonathan Robinson et al.
5 citations
The multifaceted nature of subjective experience poses a challenge to the study of consciousness. Traditional neuroscientific approaches often concentrate on isolated facets, such as perceptual awareness or the global state of consciousness and construct a theory around the relevant empirical paradigms and findings. Theories of consciousness are, therefore, often difficult to compare; indeed,...
PLoS One
2026
Clement Abbatecola, Bernard Marius ’t Hart, Belén M. Montabes De la Cruz et al.
We investigate the subjective experience of space around the visual blind spot area, the cortical representation of which is missing feedforward connectivity from one eye. We performed these experiments as part of an adversarial collaboration to test contrasting theories of consciousness; Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Predictive Processing Active Inference (AI), and Predictive Processing...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2026
Lancelot da Costa, Anil K. Seth, Karl Friston et al.
Consciousness science faces the challenge of bridging first-person experience with third-person empirical measurements. Neurophenomenology aims to build such 'generative passages' connecting the content of experience with behavioural and neuroscientific data. However, the mathematical machinery for such bridges remains underdeveloped. Here we develop a Rosetta Stone hypothesis from predictive...
PLoS One
December 4, 2025
Jonathan Robinson, Andrew W. Corcoran, Christopher J. Whyte et al.
1 citation
Active inference, a first-principles framework for modelling the behaviour of sentient agents, is beginning to be applied in consciousness research. One hypothesis arising from the framework is that active inference is necessary for changes in conscious content. As one component of an extensive adversarial collaboration among competing theories of consciousness, active inference will be...
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
September 1, 2025
Ruben Laukkonen, Karl Friston, Shamil Chandaria
17 citations
Can active inference model consciousness? We offer three conditions implying that it can. The first condition is the simulation of a world model, which determines what can be known or acted upon; namely an epistemic field. The second is inferential competition to enter the world model. Only the inferences that coherently reduce long-term uncertainty win, evincing a selection for consciousness...
Communications Biology
August 13, 2025
Steven Kotler, Michael Mannino, Karl Friston et al.
2 citations
We examine the neurobiology of intuition, a term often inconsistently defined in scientific literature. While researchers generally agree that intuition represents "an experienced-based process resulting in a spontaneous tendency toward a hunch or hypothesis," we establish a firmer neurobiological foundation by framing intuition evolutionarily as a pathfinding mechanism emerging from the...
Phys Life Rev
July 11, 2025
Simone Battaglia, Philippe Servajean, Karl Friston
2 citations
The paradox of the self-studying brain: Timescales, self-representation, and roots of consciousness. Reply to comments on 'The paradox of the self-studying brain'.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
March 19, 2025
Giulio Ruffini, Edmundo Lopez-Sola, Raul P. Aristides et al.
8 citations
preprint
Abstract Predictive coding frameworks suggest that neural computations rely on hierarchical error minimization, where sensory signals are evaluated against internal model predictions. However, the neural implementation of this inference process remains unclear. We propose that cross-frequency coupling (CFC) furnishes a fundamental mechanism for this form of inference. We first demonstrate that...
Physics of Life Reviews
March 1, 2025
Simone Battaglia, Philippe Servajean, Karl Friston
14 citations
The paradox of a brain trying to study itself presents a conundrum, raising questions about self-reference, consciousness, psychiatric disorders, and the boundaries of scientific inquiry. By which means can this complex organ shift the focus of study towards itself? We aim at unpacking the intricacies of this paradox. Historically, this question has been raised by philosophers under different...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
January 4, 2025
Steven Kotler, Darius Parvizi-Wayne, Michael Mannino et al.
Abstract This paper explores the relationship between intuition and flow from a neurodynamics perspective. Flow and intuition represent two cognitive phenomena rooted in nonconscious information processing; however, there are clear differences in both their phenomenal characteristics and, more broadly, their contribution to action and cognition. We propose, extrapolating from dual processing...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2025
Chris Fields, Mahault Albarracin, Karl Friston et al.
6 citations
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...
PLoS One
2025
Kengo Takahashi, Samuel Pontes Quero, Julien Fiorilli et al.
A major debate in the field of consciousness pertains to whether neuronal activity or rather the causal structure of neural circuits underlie the generation of conscious experience. The former position is held by theoretical accounts of consciousness based on the predictive processing framework (such as neurorepresentationalism and active inference), while the latter is posited by the...
arXiv Preprint Archive
September 30, 2024
Lancelot da Costa, Anil K. Seth, Karl Friston et al.
Consciousness science faces the challenge of bridging first-person experience with third-person empirical measurements. Neurophenomenology aims to build such `generative passages' connecting the content of experience with behavioural and neuroscientific data. However, the mathematical machinery for such bridges remains underdeveloped. Here we develop a Rosetta Stone hypothesis from predictive...
Frontiers in Psychology
June 3, 2024
Darius Parvizi-Wayne, Lars Sandved-Smith, Riddhi J. Pitliya et al.
20 citations
Flow has been described as a state of optimal performance, experienced universally across a broad range of domains: from art to athletics, gaming to writing. However, its phenomenal characteristics can, at first glance, be puzzling. Firstly, individuals in flow supposedly report a loss of self-awareness, even though they perform in a manner which seems to evince their agency and skill....
World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA)
June 1, 2024
Dan J Stein, Kris Nielsen, Anna Hartford et al.
70 citations
Work at the intersection of philosophy and psychiatry has an extensive and influential history, and has received increased attention recently, with the emergence of professional associations and a growing literature. In this paper, we review key advances in work on philosophy and psychiatry, and their related clinical implications. First, in understanding and categorizing mental disorder, both...
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
July 1, 2023
Daniel Collerton, James Barnes, Nico J Diederich et al.
80 citations
Despite decades of research, we do not definitively know how people sometimes see things that are not there. Eight models of complex visual hallucinations have been published since 2000, including Deafferentation, Reality Monitoring, Perception and Attention Deficit, Activation, Input, and Modulation, Hodological, Attentional Networks, Active Inference, and Thalamocortical Dysrhythmia Default...
Neuropharmacology
December 27, 2022
Robin Carhart-Harris, Shamil Chandaria, David Erritzøe et al.
106 citations
This theoretical article revives a classical bridging construct, canalization, to describe a new model of a general factor of psychopathology. To achieve this, we have distinguished between two types of plasticity, an early one that we call 'TEMP' for 'Temperature or Entropy Mediated Plasticity', and another, we call 'canalization', which is close to Hebbian plasticity. These two forms of...
Pharmacological Reviews
September 9, 2022
Devon Stoliker, Adeel Razi, Gary F. Egan et al.
83 citations
Neuroimaging studies of psychedelics have advanced our understanding of hierarchical brain organization and the mechanisms underlying their subjective and therapeutic effects. The primary mechanism of action of classic psychedelics is binding to serotonergic 5-HT2A receptors. Agonist activity at these receptors leads to neuromodulatory changes in synaptic efficacy that can have a profound...
Mind & Language
June 1, 2022
Axel Constant, Andy Clark, Michael D Kirchhoff et al.
Cognitive niche construction is the process whereby organisms create and maintain cause-effect models of their niche as guides for fitness influencing behavior. Extended mind theory claims that cognitive processes extend beyond the brain to include predictable states of the world. Active inference and predictive processing in cognitive science assume that organisms embody predictive (i.e.,...
Consciousness and Cognition
April 28, 2022
Anna Ciaunica, Anil K. Seth, Jakub Limanowski et al.
76 citations
This paper considers the phenomenology of depersonalisation disorder, in relation to predictive processing and its associated pathophysiology. To do this, we first establish a few mechanistic tenets of predictive processing that are necessary to talk about phenomenal transparency, mental action, and self as subject. We briefly review the important role of 'predicting precision' and how this...
Review of Philosophy and Psychology
2022
Maxwell J D Ramstead, Anil K. Seth, Casper Hesp et al.
75 citations
This paper presents a version of neurophenomenology based on generative modelling techniques developed in computational neuroscience and biology. Our approach can be described as computational phenomenology because it applies methods originally developed in computational modelling to provide a formal model of the descriptions of lived experience in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy...
Behavioural Brain Research
December 1, 2021
Wanja Wiese, Karl Friston
Methods used in artificial intelligence (AI) overlap with methods used in computational psychiatry (CP). Hence, considerations from AI ethics are also relevant to ethical discussions of CP. Ethical issues include, among others, fairness and data ownership and protection. Apart from this, morally relevant issues also include potential transformative effects of applications of AI—for instance,...