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Article

A Measure of Information Available for Prediction

This version is not peer-reviewed.

Submitted:

02 November 2017

Posted:

02 November 2017

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Abstract
Mutual information between the brain state and the external world state represents the amount of information stored in the brain that is associated with the external world. On the other hand, surprise of sensory input indicates the unpredictability of the current input. In other words, this is a measure of prediction capability, and an upper bound of surprise is known as free energy. According to the free-energy principle (FEP), the brain continues to minimize free energy to perceive the external world. For animals to survive, prediction capability is considered more important than just memorizing information. In this study, the fact that free energy represents a gap between the amount of information stored in the brain and that available for prediction is established, where the latter will be referred to as predictive information as an analogy with Bialek's predictive information. This concept involves the FEP, the infomax principle, and the predictive information theory, and will be a useful measure to quantify the amount of information available for prediction.
Keywords: 
the free-energy principle; internal model hypothesis; unconscious inference; infomax principle; predictive information; independent component analysis; principal component analysis
Subject: 
Computer Science and Mathematics  -   Information Systems
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.

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