Affect as Pacemaker: How Elation and Anxiety Govern Brain-World Alignment via Affective Criticality

Consciousness and optimal brain-world alignment emerge when the neural system maintains a precise balance between excitatory and inhibitory signaling. The affective qualities of elation and anxiety are not mere accompaniments but active control parameters: elation enhances confidence in prior beliefs (excitatory precision), while anxiety heightens sensory vigilance (inhibitory precision). This balance is homeostatically regulated through sleep-wake cycles, with NREM and REM sleep serving as subcritical and supercritical excursions, respectively. The framework integrates the Temporo-Spatial Theory of Consciousness with the Affective Criticality Hypothesis, offering a neurobiologically grounded mechanism for brain-world alignment that transforms the hard problem of consciousness into a problem of precision-regulated inference.

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Abstract

The alignment between neural dynamics and environmental structures constitutes a fundamental challenge in neuroscience. While Georg Northoff's Temporo-Spatial Theory of Consciousness (TTC) posits a "common currency" of temporo-spatial dynamics, the mechanistic operationalization of this alignment remains unspecified. This report integrates the TTC with the Affective Criticality Hypo proposed by Tucker, Luu, and Friston (2025). We propose that consciousness and optimal brain-world alignment emerge when the neural system operates in a regime of Excitatory-Inhibitory (E/I) precision balance. Specifically, we identify the affective qualities of elation and anxiety not as epiphenomenal accompaniments, but as constitutive control parameters regulating precision weighting in active inference. Elation corresponds to excitatory precision (E), enhancing prior confidence, while anxiety corresponds to inhibitory precision (I), enhancing sensory vigilance. This balance is homeostatically regulated through sleep-wake cycles, where NREM and REM sleep serve as subcritical and supercritical excursions, respectively. We provide a formalization of this process within the variational free energy framework and compare its explanatory power against alternative theories (e.g., Binding by Synchrony, Population Clocks). We conclude that affective criticality offers a neurobiologically grounded mechanism for the brain-world alignment, transforming the "hard problem" of consciousness into a problem of precision-regulated inference.