Department of Philosophy, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada; Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 3010, Australia; Centre for Youth Mental Health, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 3052, Australia; Orygen, the National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, Melbourne, 3052, Australia.
Phys Life Rev. 2018 Mar;24:1-16. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2017.09.001. Epub 2017 Sep 20.
The free-energy principle (FEP) is a formal model of neuronal processes that is widely recognised in neuroscience as a unifying theory of the brain and biobehaviour. More recently, however, it has been extended beyond the brain to explain the dynamics of living systems, and their unique capacity to avoid decay. The aim of this review is to synthesise these advances with a meta-theoretical ontology of biological systems called variational neuroethology, which integrates the FEP with Tinbergen's four research questions to explain biological systems across spatial and temporal scales. We exemplify this framework by applying it to Homo sapiens, before translating variational neuroethology into a systematic research heuristic that supplies the biological, cognitive, and social sciences with a computationally tractable guide to discovery.
自由能原理（FEP）是一种神经元过程的形式模型，在神经科学中被广泛认为是大脑和生物行为的统一理论。然而，最近它已经被扩展到大脑之外，以解释生命系统的动态及其避免衰减的独特能力。本综述的目的是将这些进展与一种称为变分神经行为学的生物系统元理论本体论综合起来，该本体论将 FEP 与廷伯根的四个研究问题结合起来，以解释跨越时空尺度的生物系统。我们通过将其应用于智人来说明这个框架，然后将变分神经行为学转化为一种系统的研究启发式方法，为生物科学、认知科学和社会科学提供了一个可计算的发现指南。
