A Factor Graph Description of Deep Temporal Active Inference

作者：de Vries Bert^*; Friston Karl J

来源：Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 2017, 11: 95.

DOI：10.3389/fncom.2017.00095

• active inference
• free-energy principle
• factor graphs
• belief propagation
• message passing
• multi-scale dynamical system

Active inference is a corollary of the Free Energy Principle that prescribes how self-organizing biological agents interact with their environment. The study of active inference processes relies on the definition of a generative probabilistic model and a description of how a free energy functional is minimized by neuronal message passing under that model. This paper presents a tutorial introduction to specifying active inference processes by Forney-style factor graphs (FFG). The FFG framework provides both an insightful representation of the probabilistic model and a biologically plausible inference scheme that, in principle, can be automatically executed in a computer simulation. As an illustrative example, we present an FFG for a deep temporal active inference process. The graph clearly shows how policy selection by expected free energy minimization results from free energy minimization per se, in an appropriate generative policy model.

• 出版日期2017-10-18