Connectionists: Thinking About Thinking Seminar: Prof. Karl Friston (and Dr. James Whittington) Weds 22nd July, 6pm BST

[Ruairidh Battleday]

Dear all,

A pleasure to invite you to our Summer Keynote Seminar, as part of the
Thinking About Thinking Seminar series. After Prof. Friston's talk, he will
have a fireside with Dr. James Whittington!

Details below:
✦ Thinking About Thinking: Fellowship Seminars: Professor Karl Friston FRS

𝑺𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒓 𝒕𝒊𝒕𝒍𝒆: I am therefore I think
𝑫𝒂𝒕𝒆: Wednesday, 22 July 2026
𝑻𝒊𝒎𝒆: 6:00pm BST
𝑳𝒐𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏: https://lnkd.in/eqYEhYQc

This overview of the free energy principle offers an account of embodied
exchange with the world that associates neuronal operations with actively
inferring the causes of our sensations. The seminar links formal
mathematical descriptions of dynamical systems with perception in terms of
beliefs and goals.

Professor Friston will discuss how the lawful dynamics of living
systems—from a single cell organism to the human brain—suggest that
internal states can be interpreted as modelling or predicting the external
causes of sensory fluctuations. In other words, if a system exists, its
internal states must encode probabilistic beliefs about external states.

The seminar will also explore how this perspective informs functional
anatomy through predictive coding and hierarchical architectures, before
concluding with simulations demonstrating the epistemic behaviour that
emerges through active inference.

𝑨𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒆𝒓:
Karl Friston is a theoretical neuroscientist and authority on brain
imaging. He invented Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM), Voxel-Based
Morphometry (VBM), and Dynamic Causal Modelling (DCM). These contributions
were motivated by schizophrenia research and theoretical studies of
value-learning, formulated as the dysconnection hypothesis of schizophrenia.

His mathematical contributions include Variational Laplace and generalized
filtering for hierarchical Bayesian model inversion. Friston currently
works on models of functional integration in the human brain and the
principles underlying neuronal interactions. His principal contribution to
theoretical neurobiology is the free energy principle for action and
perception (active inference).

He is Professor at the Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University
College London, and Honorary Consultant at The National Hospital for
Neurology and Neurosurgery.

𝑰𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒚: Dr. James Whittington (Oxford), Co-Founder and
CSO, Thinking About Thinking

We look forward to welcoming you to the discussion.

Ruairidh and the team



-- 
[image: Thinking About Thinking]
Dr Ruairidh McLennan Battleday
Chief Executive Officer
Thinking About Thinking

battleday at thinkingaboutthinking.org • thinkingaboutthinking.org
<https://www.thinkingaboutthinking.org/> • LinkedIn
<https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruairidh-battleday-648a2b65/>
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