The work of the neuroscientist Karl Friston has transformed our understanding of the brain. But the impact of his current explorations is taking us much further, leading us to a deeper understanding of the very nature of learning.
The statistical algorithms developed by Friston gave neuroscientists the ability to use fMRIs to translate measured blood flows in the brain into images of mental activity, allowing them, for the first time, to watch the brain as it thinks.
This ability helped them to discover that the brain is not just comprised of the left and right hemispheres, but is actually a series of complex interconnected networks – an insight that is dramatically accelerating brain research.
But, arguably, it's his new theories of sentience and learning that hold the potential for even greater revelation. Friston calls his new theory, Active Inference, a 'process theory'.
His theory illuminates not only how humans learn but also how all organisms learn and evolve, a universal mathematical model of sentience that provides a deeper understanding of consciousness to help us understand the very nature of not only evolution but also the dynamic of Bohmian 'unfolding' that underpins the Essence of Agile.
In its simplest terms, the theory recognizes that everything has an inner state that interacts with an outer state.
The inner state engages with the outer state based on a model, what he calls a 'generative model', of what the inner state assumes to be the behavior of the outer state.
As the inner state acts in the outer state, something Friston calls Epistemic Foraging, there will always be experiences that are unexpected, as the outer state is far more complex than can ever be understood by the inner state.
Faced with this disruptive 'surprise', the inner state must find a pattern of meaning in this surprise and then update its model, something Friston calls a 'Bayesian belief update' – a process that is remarkably similar to what Jean Piaget proposed some years before in his constructivist learning theory.
The speed by which an inner state cycles through a process of engaging with the unknowns of an outer state experiencing surprise and then making new meaning of it, defines the speed at which it can learn and unleash potential.
Real learning, deep learning, then, requires _curiosity_, which entices us to venture into an unknown, and _surprise_, that which we encounter there, challenging us to create _meaning_ for ourselves and others.
Meaning that is shared in The Stories We Tell each other.
Next: Weaving Together
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