Episodic Visual Hallucinations, Inference and Free Energy

Understandings of how visual hallucinations appear have been highly influenced by generative approaches, in particular Friston’s Active Inference conceptualization. Their core proposition is that these phenomena occur when hallucinatory expectations outweigh actual sensory data. This imbalance occurs as the brain seeks to minimize informational free energy, a measure of the distance between predicted and actual sensory data in a stationary open system. We review this approach in the light of old and new information on the role of environmental factors in episodic hallucinations. In particular, we highlight the possible relationship of specific visual triggers to the onset and offset of some episodes. We use an analogy from phase transitions in physics to explore factors which might account for intermittent shifts between veridical and hallucinatory vision. In these triggered forms of hallucinations, we suggest that there is a transient disturbance in the normal one-to-one correspondence between a real object and the counterpart perception such that this correspondence becomes between the real object and a hallucination. Generative models propose that a lack of information transfer from the environment to the brain is one of the key features of hallucinations. In contrast, we submit that specific information transfer is required at onset and offset in these cases. We propose that this transient one-to-one correspondence between environment and hallucination is mediated more by aberrant discriminative than by generative inference. Discriminative inference can be conceptualized as a process for maximizing shared information between the environment and perception within a self-organizing nonstationary system. We suggest that generative inference plays the greater role in established hallucinations and in the persistence of individual hallucinatory episodes. We further explore whether thermodynamic free energy may be an additional factor in why hallucinations are temporary. Future empirical research could productively concentrate on three areas. Firstly, subjective perceptual changes and parallel variations in brain function during specific transitions between veridical and hallucinatory vision to inform models of how episodes occur. Secondly, systematic investigation of the links between environment and hallucination episodes to probe the role of information transfer in triggering transitions between veridical and hallucinatory vision. Finally, changes in hallucinatory episodes over time to elucidate the role of learning on phenomenology. These empirical data will allow the potential roles of different forms of inference in the stages of hallucinatory episodes to be elucidated.