Predictive coding, active inference and the brain: An evolutionary perspective

摘要

In 1963, Niko Tinbergen proposed that the phylogeny of behavior was one of the foremost questions to be addressed by behavioral research: We have to understand the evolution of the species we are researching -in our case, the human being - if we are to understand and explain the behavior. In this context, the latest issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B is of interest to neuropsychoanalysis, as its subject is systems neuroscience through the lens of evolutionary theory. All articles are interesting and more or less relevant to readers of all kinds, but one needs special mention in this journal: the article by Pezzulo, Parr and Friston on the evolution of brain architectures for predictive coding and active inference. Or, to reformulate in the words of Tinbergen: the phylogeny of the brainmind as executor of the free-energy principle, well known to the readers of this journal.