Active inference

The second route to prediction-error minimization: rather than changing the model to fit the world, the agent changes the world to fit the model. In predictive-coding accounts of motor control, descending proprioceptive predictions are fulfilled by classical motor reflexes (Adams, Friston et al.).

Seth’s interoceptive application

In Seth (2013), active interoceptive inference is the mechanism by which interoceptive predictions are “transcribed into reference points for autonomic reflexes that regulate physiological homeostasis” — sympathetic/parasympathetic outflow from AIC/ACC enslaves autonomic reflexes (heart rate, respiration, smooth muscle) just as proprioceptive predictions enslave motor reflexes.

The precision precondition

Active inference works only if the relevant prediction errors have transiently low precision (attenuated attention). Otherwise precise interoceptive prediction errors would revise the generative model rather than drive autonomic action. This gives a principled account of why phasic physiological changes accompany, e.g., rubber-hand-illusion induction (threat to the rubber hand → skin-conductance responses), read as altered autonomic control under descending self-related predictions. See experience-of-body-ownership.

Farb et al.’s regulatory pairing

Farb et al. (2015) pair active inference with its named counterpart, perceptual-inference (weighting sensation over priors instead), and map modern psychological regulation strategies — suppression, distraction, reappraisal — onto active inference, contrasted with contemplative strategies (acceptance, equanimity) mapped onto perceptual inference. They caution that both routes are needed; over-reliance on active inference can foreclose the insight that perceptual inference affords (e.g., “knee-jerk” regulatory responses in emotional eating).

Does perceptual inference reduce to active inference?

An open question worth holding against the pairing above: if shifting into perceptual inference must itself be initiated (attention redirected, precision on one’s own priors lowered, an update permitted), that initiating move looks like active inference — suggesting the two are not peers but nested, with active inference operating at the meta level even when the resulting content is “letting go.” See perceptual-inference-as-regulation.