How do inner screens enable imaginative experience? Applying the free-energy principle directly to the study of conscious experience.

Summary

Our inner mental world shapes how we think, plan, and imagine. New research reveals how our brain's cognitive architecture creates rich internal experiences through visual imagery and inner speech. People with aphantasia - who cannot form mental images - demonstrate how these internal processes vary widely. The study shows that our mind's ability to generate surprising imagined scenarios helps with planning and metacognition, while also influencing mood and potential depression. This introspective system lets us simulate future events and reflect on past experiences, forming a crucial part of human consciousness.

Abstract

This paper examines the constraints that the free-energy principle (FEP) places on possible model of consciousness, particularly models of attentional control and imaginative experiences, including episodic memory and planning. We first rehearse the classical and quantum formulations of the FEP, focusing on their application to multi-component systems, in which only some components interact directly with the external environment. In particular, we discuss the role of internal boundaries that have the structure of Markov blankets, and hence function as classical information channels between components. We then show how this formal structure supports models of attentional control and imaginative experience, with a focus on (i) how imaginative experience can employ the spatio-temporal and object-recognition reference frames employed in ordinary, non-imaginative experience and (ii) how imaginative experience can be internally generated but still surprising. We conclude by discussing the implementation, phenomenology, and phylogeny of imaginative experience, and the implications of the large state and trait variability of imaginative experience in humans.

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