Ronald Sladky ~ Active Inference Insights 012 ~ Amygdala, Priors, fMRI
Amygdala lovers unite: this one is for you. This week, Darius and neuroscientist Ronald Sladky explore the wonderful and wacky world of subcortical structures, with a special focus on the mysterious, infamous amygdala. This conversation also details developments in brain imaging, and attempts to bring clarity to that age-old active inference question: what are priors?
Generalized decomposition of multivariate information
Thomas Varley
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10843128/
Since its introduction, the partial information decomposition (PID) has emerged as a powerful, information-theoretic technique useful for studying the structure of (potentially higher-order) interactions in complex systems. Despite its utility, the applicability of the PID is restricted by the need to assign elements as either “sources” or “targets”, as well as the specific structure of the mutual information itself. Here, I introduce a generalized information decomposition that relaxes the source/target distinction while still satisfying the basic intuitions about information. This approach is based on the decomposition of the Kullback-Leibler divergence, and consequently allows for the analysis of any information gained when updating from an arbitrary prior to an arbitrary posterior. As a result, any information-theoretic measure that can be written as a linear combination of Kullback-Leibler divergences admits a decomposition in the style of Williams and Beer, including the total correlation, the negentropy, and the mutual information as special cases. This paper explores how the generalized information decomposition can reveal novel insights into existing measures, as well as the nature of higher-order synergies. We show that synergistic information is intimately related to the well-known Tononi-Sporns-Edelman (TSE) complexity, and that synergistic information requires a similar integration/segregation balance as a high TSE complexity. Finally, I end with a discussion of how this approach fits into other attempts to generalize the PID and the possibilities for empirical applications.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iY8ICcmd2E
Course materials
https://coda.io/@active-inference-institute/fields-physics-2023
More information
https://www.activeinference.org/education/Physics-Fields-2023
“Physics as Information Processing”
Course taught by Chris Fields
Course assistant is Ander Aguirre
Hosted during 2023 by the Active Inference Institute
Active Inference Institute information:
Website: https://activeinference.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/InferenceActive
Discord: https://discord.gg/8VNKNp4jtx
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ActiveInference/
Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-institute/livestreams
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWEcQVcgleM
Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain, and Behavior
By Thomas Parr, Giovanni Pezzulo and Karl J. Friston
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262045353/active-inference/
Join an upcoming cohort of the Textbook Group!
https://www.activeinference.org/education/textbook-group
Active Inference Institute information:
Website: https://activeinference.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/InferenceActive
Discord: https://discord.gg/8VNKNp4jtx
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ActiveInference/
Active Inference Livestreams: https://coda.io/@active-inference-institute/livestreams
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV7pW4p60VI
It’s more consciousness-talk on today’s episode of Active Inference Insights, as Darius discusses affective states, dreams, interoception and much more with psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist Professor Mark Solms.
Mark Solms
https://neuroscience.uct.ac.za/contacts/mark-solms
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vD4p8rQAAAAJ&hl=en
https://twitter.com/mark_solms?lang=en-GB
"The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness"
"The Brain and the Inner World: An Introduction to the Neuroscience of the Subjective Experience"
Darius Parvizi-Wayne
https://twitter.com/dparviziwayne
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Darius-Parvizi-Wayne
Active Inference Insititute
https://www.activeinference.org
https://twitter.com/InferenceActive
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpUuttKJoDM