Relevance of Karl J. Friston's Free Energy Principle

[microsansfil]

Hello,

Does this concept of "Free energy principle ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_approaches_to_brain_function#Free_energy )", developed by Karl J. Friston, showed its relevance ?

ie is it a fruitful concept in the field of neuroscience and in biology ?


Patrick

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I can't comment on how valid the model is because I don't understand it but here is an article which may explain it in better detail:

The free-energy principle: a rough guide to the brain?
http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/The free-energy principle - a rough guide to the brain.pdf

 

[microsansfil]

I can't comment on how valid the model is because I don't understand it but here is an article which may explain it in better detail:

indeed, it is not easy to understand this approach, which seem to derive from the concept of thermodynamics :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynamic_free_energy

Thank for the article

Patrick

 

[atyy]

In classical physics, dynamical equations can be derived from a principle of least action.

We can ask the inverse question, which dynamical equations mininimize an action? This question has been addressed by Tonti (and others).
http://www.dic.univ.trieste.it/perspage/tonti/DEPOSITO/Nonlinear.pdf
http://www.dic.univ.trieste.it/perspage/tonti/DEPOSITO/Rassias.pdf
http://www.dic.univ.trieste.it/perspage/tonti/DEPOSITO/Tonti-russi.pdf

Here is some related work on energy functions for "self-organizing maps".
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1606243

 

[atyy]

Perhaps closer to the technicalities of the article, many forms of approximate inference can be stated using variational language.

http://www.merl.com/publications/docs/TR2001-22.pdf
Understanding Belief Propagation and its Generalizations
Jonathan S. Yedidia, William T. Freeman, and Yair Weiss

http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/spr06/cos598C/papers/YedidaFreemanWeiss2004.pdf
Constructing Free Energy Approximations and Generalized Belief Propagation Algorithms
Jonathan S. Yedidia, William T. Freeman, and Yair Weiss

https://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wainwrig/Papers/WaiJor08_FTML.pdf
Graphical Models, Exponential Families, and Variational Inference
Martin J. Wainwright and Michael I. Jordan

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jordan/papers/variational-intro.pdf
An Introduction to Variational Methods for Graphical Models
Michael Jordan, Zoubin Ghahramani, Tomi Jaakkola, Lawrence Saul