CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 217Embodied and Extended CognitionPhilosophy and Theoretical ScienceCognitive Science and Education Research

The hierarchically mechanistic mind: A free-energy formulation of the human psyche

Open access
Badcock, Paul B., Friston, Karl J., Ramstead, Maxwell J.D.·2019·Physics of Life Reviews
DOI 10.1016/j.plrev.2018.10.002PMC PMC6941235
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

This article presents a unifying theory of the embodied, situated human brain called the Hierarchically Mechanistic Mind (HMM). The HMM describes the brain as a complex adaptive system that actively minimises the decay of our sensory and physical states by producing self-fulfilling action-perception cycles via dynamical interactions between hierarchically organised neurocognitive mechanisms. This theory synthesises the free-energy principle (FEP) in neuroscience with an evolutionary systems theory of psychology that explains our brains, minds, and behaviour by appealing to Tinbergen's four questions: adaptation, phylogeny, ontogeny, and mechanism. After leveraging the FEP to formally define the HMM across different spatiotemporal scales, we conclude by exploring its implications for theorising and research in the sciences of the mind and behaviour.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.plrev.2018.10.002

Cites

41 of 41 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The free energy principle casts control theoretic essential variables in terms of high precision prior expectations.

    “The free energy principle (Friston et al. 2010; Badcock et al. 2019) thus casts control theoretic ‘essential variables’ in terms of high precision prior expectations.”

    From Consciousness in active inference: Deep self-models, other minds, and the challenge of psychedelic-induced ego-dissolution (2021) · cites this paper as Badcock et al. 2019

    In “The variational free-energy formulation” (page unavailable), the paper describes maintaining functional states within physiological bounds as avoiding surprising states, and says inherited adaptive priors guide organisms toward unsurprising states. This supports the proposed link between homeostatic regulation and prior expectations, but the passage does not identify control-theoretic ‘essential variables’ as high-precision priors; its discussion of precision concerns prediction-error signals. (LLM, conf=0.79)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 113

  1. [2]Badcock P.B. Davey C.G. Whittle S. Allen N.B. Friston K.J. The depressed brain: an evolutionary systems theory Trends Cogn Sci 21 2017 182 194 28161288
  2. [3]Ramstead M.J.D. Badcock P.B. Friston K.J. Answering Schrödinger's question: a free-energy formulation Phys Life Rev 24 2018 1 16 29029962 PMC5857288
  3. [4]Ramstead M.J. Badcock P.B. Friston K.J. Variational neuroethology: answering further questions: reply to comments on “answering Schrödinger's question: a free-energy formulation” Phys Life Rev 24 2018 59 66 29329942
  4. [5]Schrödinger E. What is life? 1944 Cambridge University Press Cambridge
  5. [7]Haken H. Principles of brain functioning: a synergetic approach to brain activity, behaviour and cognition 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin
  6. [8]Kelso J.S. Dynamic patterns: the self-organization of brain and behavior 1995 MIT Press Cambridge, MA
  7. [9]Depew D.J. Weber B.H. Darwinism evolving: systems dynamics and the genealogy of natural selection 1995 MIT Press Cambridge, MA
  8. [10]Eigen M. Schuster P. The hypercycle: a principle of natural self-organisation 1979 Springer-Verlag Berlin 593400
  9. [12]Kauffman S.A. The origins of order: self-organization and selection in evolution 1993 Oxford University Press Oxford
  10. [13]Ao P. Emerging of stochastic dynamical equalities and steady state thermodynamics from Darwinian dynamics Commun Theor Phys 49 2008 PMC3177955 21949462
  11. [14]Friston K. A theory of cortical responses Philos Trans R Soc Lond B, Biol Sci 360 2005 815 836 15937014 PMC1569488
  12. [16]Friston K.J. Kilner J. Harrison L. A free energy principle for the brain J Physiol 100 2006 70 87 17097864
  13. [17]Breakspear M. Stam C.J. Dynamics of a neural system with a multiscale architecture Philos Trans R Soc Lond B, Biol Sci 360 2005 1051 1074 16087448 PMC1854927
  14. [20]Park H-J. Friston K. Structural and functional brain networks: from connections to cognition Science 2013 342 24179229
  15. [22]Barrett H.C. Kurzban R. Modularity in cognition: framing the debate Psychol Rev 113 2006 628 16802884
  16. [23]Barrett H.C. A hierarchical model of the evolution of human brain specializations Proc Natl Acad Sci 109 2012 10733 10740 22723350 PMC3386868
  17. [24]Fodor J.A. The modularity of mind: an essay on faculty psychology 1983 MIT Press Cambridge, MA
  18. [30]Friston K. Learning and inference in the brain Neural Netw 16 2003 1325 1352 14622888
  19. [32]Fotopoulou A. Time to get rid of the ‘Modular’ in neuropsychology: a unified theory of anosognosia as aberrant predictive coding J Neuropsychol 8 2014 1 19 23469983
  20. [33]Markov N.T. Kennedy H. The importance of being hierarchical Curr Opin Neurobiol 23 2013 187 194 23339864
  21. [34]Mesulam M-M. From sensation to cognition Brain: J Neurol 121 1998 1013 1052 9648540
  22. [35]Mesulam M. The evolving landscape of human cortical connectivity: facts and inferences NeuroImage 62 2012 2182 2189 22209814 PMC3321392
  23. [36]Meunier D. Lambiotte R. Fornito A. Ersche K. Bullmore E.T. Hierarchical modularity in human brain functional networks Front Neuroinform 3 2009 37 19949480 PMC2784301
  24. [37]Meunier D. Lambiotte R. Bullmore E.T. Modular and hierarchically modular organization of brain networks Front Neurosci 4 2010 200 21151783 PMC3000003
  25. [38]Mumford D. On the computational architecture of the neocortex II Biol Cybern 66 1992 251 1540675
  26. [39]Price C.J. Friston K.J. Degeneracy and cognitive anatomy Trends Cogn Sci 6 2002 416 421 12413574
  27. [40]Sporns O. Small-world connectivity, motif composition, and complexity of fractal neuronal connections Biosystems 85 2006 55 64 16757100
  28. [41]Baars B.J. Global workspace theory of consciousness: toward a cognitive neuroscience of human experience Prog Brain Res 150 2005 45 53 16186014
  29. [43]Evans J.S.B. In two minds: dual-process accounts of reasoning Trends Cogn Sci 7 2003 454 459 14550493
  30. [44]Stanovich K.E. West R.F. Individual differences in reasoning: implications for the rationality debate? Behav Brain Sci 23 2000 645 665 11301544
  31. [45]Kaiser M. A tutorial in connectome analysis: topological and spatial features of brain networks NeuroImage 57 2011 892 907 21605688
  32. [46]Moretti P. Muñoz M.A. Griffiths phases and the stretching of criticality in brain networks Nat Commun 4 2013 2521 24088740
  33. [47]Wang Z. Dai Z. Gong G. Zhou C. He Y. Understanding structural-functional relationships in the human brain: a large-scale network perspective Neuroscientist 21 2015 290 305 24962094
  34. [48]Hilgetag C.C. Goulas A. Is the brain really a small-world network? Brain Struct Funct 221 2016 2361 2366 25894630 PMC4853440
  35. [49]Clark A. Surfing uncertainty: prediction, action, and the embodied mind 2015 Oxford University Press Oxford
  36. [50]Hohwy J. The predictive mind 2014 Oxford University Press Oxford
  37. [51]Sengupta B. Stemmler M.B. Friston K.J. Information and efficiency in the nervous system—a synthesis PLoS Comput Biol 9 2013 e1003157 PMC3723496 23935475
  38. [52]Friston K.J. Life as we know it J R Soc Interface 10 2013 PMC3730701 23825119
  39. [56]Friston K.J. Daunizeau J. Kiebel S.J. Reinforcement learning or active inference? PLoS ONE 4 2009 e6421 PMC2713351 19641614
  40. [59]Friston K. Breakspear M. Deco G. Perception and self-organized instability Front Comput Neurosci 6 2012 44 22783185 PMC3390798
  41. [62]Ramstead M.J. Constant A. Badcock P.B. Friston K. Variational ecology and the physics of minds Phys Life Rev 31 2019 188 205 [in this issue] 30655223 PMC6941227
  42. [63]Campbell J.O. Universal Darwinism as a process of Bayesian inference Front Syst Neurosci 10 2016 PMC4894882 27375438
  43. [64]Campbell J.O. Towards a unification of evolutionary dynamics: comment on “Answering Schrödinger's question: A free-energy formulation” by Maxwell James Désormeau Ramstead et al Phys Life Rev 2017 29122563
  44. [65]McNamara J.M. Houston A.I. Integrating function and mechanism Trends Ecol Evol 24 2009 670 675 19683827
  45. [67]Stamps J.A. Frankenhuis W.E. Bayesian models of development Trends Ecol Evol 31 2016 260 268 26896042
  46. [68]Ungerleider L.G. Mishkin M. Two cortical visual systems Goodale M.A. Ingle D.J. Mansfield R.J. Analysis of visual behavior 1982 MIT Press Cambridge, MA
  47. [69]Friston K. Buzsáki G. The functional anatomy of time: what and when in the brain Trends Cogn Sci 20 2016 500 511 27261057
  48. [70]Haken H. Synergetics: an introduction. Non-equilibrium phase transition and self-selforganisation in physics, chemistry and biology 1983 Springer-Verlag Berlin
  49. [72]Murray J.D. Bernacchia A. Freedman D.J. Romo R. Wallis J.D. Cai X. A hierarchy of intrinsic timescales across primate cortex Nat Neurosci 17 2014 1661 25383900 PMC4241138
  50. [73]Kiebel S.J. Daunizeau J. Friston K.J. Perception and hierarchical dynamics Front Neuroinform 3 2009 20 19649171 PMC2718783
  51. [74]Perdikis D. Huys R. Jirsa V.K. Time scale hierarchies in the functional organization of complex behaviors PLoS Comput Biol 7 2011 e1002198 PMC3182871 21980278
  52. [75]Chaudhuri R. Knoblauch K. Gariel M-A. Kennedy H. Wang X-J. A large-scale circuit mechanism for hierarchical dynamical processing in the primate cortex Neuron 88 2015 419 431 26439530 PMC4630024
  53. [77]Friston K.J. Rosch R. Parr T. Price C. Bowman H. Deep temporal models and active inference Neurosci Biobehav Rev 90 2018 486 501 29747865 PMC5998386
  54. [79]Kiebel S.J. Von Kriegstein K. Daunizeau J. Friston K.J. Recognizing sequences of sequences PLoS Comput Biol 5 2009 e1000464 PMC2714976 19680429
  55. [83]Calvo P. Friston K. Predicting green: really radical (plant) predictive processing J R Soc Interface 14 2017 20170096 PMC5493793 28637913
  56. [84]Allen M. Friston K.J. From cognitivism to autopoiesis: towards a computational framework for the embodied mind Synthese 2016 1 24 PMC5972168 29887647
  57. [85]Gallagher S. Allen M. Active inference, enactivism and the hermeneutics of social cognition Synthese 2016 1 22 PMC5972154 29887648
  58. [86]Friston K. Thornton C. Clark A. Free-energy minimization and the dark-room problem Front Psychol 3 2012 PMC3347222 22586414
  59. [89]Caporael L.R. Evolutionary psychology: toward a unifying theory and a hybrid science Annu Rev Psychol 52 2001 607 628 11148319
  60. [90]Geary D.C. Bjorklund D.F. Evolutionary developmental psychology Child Dev 71 2000 57 65 10836558
  61. [93]Lickliter R. Honeycutt H. Developmental dynamics: toward a biologically plausible evolutionary psychology Psychol Bull 129 2003 819 14599279
  62. [96]Sameroff A. A unified theory of development: a dialectic integration of nature and nurture Child Dev 81 2010 6 22 20331651
  63. [97]Scott-Phillips T.C. Dickins T.E. West S.A. Evolutionary theory and the ultimate–proximate distinction in the human behavioral sciences Perspect Psychol Sci 6 2011 38 47 26162114
  64. [99]Bateson P. Laland K.N. Tinbergen's four questions: an appreciation and an update Trends Ecol Evol 28 2013 712 718 24144467
  65. [100]Bateson P. Laland K.N. On current utility and adaptive significance: a response to Nesse Trends Ecol Evol 28 2013 682 683 24211247
  66. [101]Nesse R.M. Tinbergen's four questions, organized: a response to Bateson and Laland Trends Ecol Evol 28 2013 681 682 24216179
  67. [102]Hendriks-Jansen H. Catching ourselves in the act 1996 MIT Press Cambridge, MA
  68. [103]Jablonka E. Lamb M.J. Evolution in four dimensions: genetic, epigenetic, behavioural, and symbolic variation in the history of life 2005 MIT Press Cambridge, MA
  69. [104]Laland K.N. Sterelny K. Odling-Smee J. Hoppitt W. Uller T. Cause and effect in biology revisited: is Mayr's proximate-ultimate dichotomy still useful? Science 334 2011 1512 1516 22174243
  70. [106]Oyama S. The ontogeny of information: developmental systems and evolution 2000 Duke University Press
  71. [107]Pigliucci M. Do we need an extended evolutionary synthesis? Evolution 61 2007 2743 2749 17924956
  72. [108]Striedter G.F. Stepping into the same river twice: homologues as recurring attractors in epigenetic landscapes Brain Behav Evol 52 1998 218 231 9787221
  73. [109]Gallagher S. Enactivist interventions: rethinking the mind 2017 Oxford University Press
  74. [114]Badre D. Cognitive control, hierarchy, and the rostro-caudal organization of the frontal lobes Trends Cogn Sci 12 2008 193 200 18403252
  75. [116]Barrett L.F. The future of psychology: connecting mind to brain Perspect Psychol Sci 4 2009 326 339 19844601 PMC2763392
  76. [119]Geary D.C. Huffman K.J. Brain and cognitive evolution: forms of modularity and functions of mind Psychol Bull 128 2002 667 12206190
  77. [120]Karmiloff-Smith A. Beyond modularity: a developmental perspective on cognitive science 1992 MIT Press Cambridge, MA
  78. [121]Karmiloff-Smith A. Development itself is the key to understanding developmental disorders Trends Cogn Sci 2 1998 389 398 21227254
  79. [123]Quartz S.R. The constructivist brain Trends Cogn Sci 3 1999 48 57 10234227
  80. [124]Anderson M.L. After phrenology: neural reuse and the interactive brain 2014 The MIT Press Cambridge, MA, London, England
  81. [125]Anderson M.L. Précis of after phrenology: neural reuse and the interactive brain Behav Brain Sci 39 2016 26077688
  82. [126]Anderson M.L. Kinnison J. Pessoa L. Describing functional diversity of brain regions and brain networks NeuroImage 73 2013 50 58 23396162 PMC3756684
  83. [129]Bertolero M.A. Yeo B.T. D'Esposito M. The modular and integrative functional architecture of the human brain Proc Natl Acad Sci 112 2015 E6798 E6807 26598686 PMC4679040
  84. [130]Taylor P.N. Wang Y. Kaiser M. Within brain area tractography suggests local modularity using high resolution connectomics Sci Rep 7 2017 39859 PMC5213837 28054634
  85. [132]Friston K.J. Price C.J. Degeneracy and redundancy in cognitive anatomy Trends Cogn Sci 7 2003 151 152 12691761
  86. [133]Mengistu H. Huizinga J. Mouret J-B. Clune J. The evolutionary origins of hierarchy PLoS Comput Biol 12 2016 PMC4900613 27280881
  87. [135]Kauffman S. At home in the universe: the search for the laws of self-organization and complexity 1996 Oxford University Press
  88. [137]Hesse J. Gross T. Self-organized criticality as a fundamental property of neural systems Front Syst Neurosci 8 2014 46 59 25294989 PMC4171833
  89. [138]Daunizeau J. A plea for “variational neuroethology”: comment on “Answering Schrödinger's question: a free-energy formulation” by MJ Desormeau Ramstead et al Phys Life Rev 2018 29191411
  90. [139]Kirmayer L.J. Ontologies of life: from thermodynamics to teleonomics. Comment on “answering Schrödinger's question: a free-energy formulation” by Maxwell James Désormeau Ramstead et al Phys Life Rev 2018 29217151
  91. [143]Rabinovich M.I. Simmons A.N. Varona P. Dynamical bridge between brain and mind Trends Cogn Sci 19 2015 453 461 26149511
  92. [144]Shipp S. Neural elements for predictive coding Front Psychol 7 2016 PMC5114244 27917138
  93. [146]Sporns O. Contributions and challenges for network models in cognitive neuroscience Nat Neurosci 17 2014 652 24686784
  94. [147]Blakemore S-J. Imaging brain development: the adolescent brain NeuroImage 61 2012 397 406 22178817
  95. [148]Beer R.D. Intelligence as adaptive behaviour: an experiment in computational neuroethology 1990 Academic Press San Diego, CA
  96. [149]Chiel H.J. Beer R.D. The brain has a body: adaptive behavior emerges from interactions of nervous system, body and environment Trends Neurosci 20 1997 553 557 9416664
  97. [150]Clark A. An embodied cognitive science? Trends Cogn Sci 3 1999 345 351 10461197
  98. [151]Wilson M. Six views of embodied cognition Psychon Bull Rev 9 2002 625 636 12613670
  99. [152]Badcock P.B. Ploeger A. Allen N.B. After phrenology: time for a paradigm shift in cognitive science Behav Brain Sci 39 2016 27561458
  100. [154]Crone E.A. Ridderinkhof K.R. The developing brain: from theory to neuroimaging and back Dev Cogn Neurosci 1 2011 101 109 22436435 PMC6987573
  101. [155]Poldrack R.A. Mapping mental function to brain structure: how can cognitive neuroimaging succeed? Perspect Psychol Sci 5 2010 753 761 25076977 PMC4112478
  102. [156]Price C.J. Friston K.J. Functional ontologies for cognition: the systematic definition of structure and function Cogn Neuropsychol 22 2005 262 275 21038249
  103. [157]Huys Q.J. Dayan P. A Bayesian formulation of behavioral control Cognition 113 2009 314 328 19285311
  104. [158]Frankenhuis W.E. Panchanathan K. Clark Barrett H. Bridging developmental systems theory and evolutionary psychology using dynamic optimization Dev Sci 16 2013 584 598 23786476
  105. [160]Holland J.H. Emergence: from chaos to order 1998 Addison Wesley Redwood City, CA
  106. [161]Feldman H. Friston K. Attention, uncertainty, and free-energy Front Human Neurosci 4 2010 215 PMC3001758 21160551
  107. [169]Barrett L.F. Simmons W.K. Interoceptive predictions in the brain Nat Rev Neurosci 16 2015 419 26016744 PMC4731102
  108. [170]Moulin C. Souchay C. An active inference and epistemic value view of metacognition Cogn Neurosci 6 2015 221 222 25977988
  109. [171]Moutoussis M. Fearon P. El-Deredy W. Dolan R.J. Friston K.J. Bayesian inferences about the self (and others): a review Conscious Cogn 25 2014 67 76 24583455 PMC3989044
  110. [172]Moutoussis M. Trujillo-Barreto N.J. El-Deredy W. Dolan R. Friston K. A formal model of interpersonal inference Front Human Neurosci 8 2014 160 PMC3971175 24723872
  111. [173]Kolossa A. Fingscheidt T. Wessel K. Kopp B. A model-based approach to trial-by-trial P300 amplitude fluctuations Front Human Neurosci 6 2013 359 PMC3567611 23404628
  112. [174]Mars R.B. Debener S. Gladwin T.E. Harrison L.M. Haggard P. Rothwell J.C. Trial-by-trial fluctuations in the event-related electroencephalogram reflect dynamic changes in the degree of surprise J Neurosci 28 2008 12539 12545 19020046 PMC6671727
  113. [175]Leydesdorff L. Lifting the Markov blankets of socio-cultural evolution: a comment on “Answering Schrödinger's question: a free-energy formulation” by Maxwell James Désormeau Ramstead et al Phys Life Rev 2018 29122562

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Badcock, P. B., Friston, K. J., & Ramstead, M. J. D.
Affiliations
  • The University of Melbourne (AU)
  • Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging (GB)
Corresponding author
Badcock, Paul B.
ORCID
Venue
Physics of Life Reviews
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2019-12
Volume
31
Pages
104-121
ISSN
1571-0645 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.plrev.2018.10.002
PMC
PMC6941235
OpenAlex
W2908555537
Cited by
217
References
41
Citations by year
2026: 11 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 48 · 2023: 35 · 2022: 28 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 42 · 2019: 10
FWCI
3.33
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Physics of Life Reviews (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Minerva Access (University of Melbourne) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Wellcome Trust (088130/Z/09/Z)
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
  • Canada First Research Excellence Fund
  • McGill University
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Cognitive Science and Education Research
Keywords
free energy principle, embodied cognition, situated cognition, complex adaptive systems, perception-action cycle, neurocognitive mechanisms, Tinbergen's four questions, adaptation, phylogeny, ontogeny, mechanisms, behavior
MeSH terms
Biological Evolution, Humans, Models, Neurological, Neurosciences, Psychology, Thermodynamics

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review