![]() The characteristic of the vertebrate brain to prioritize its own high energy is captured by the notion of the ‘selfish brain’. ![]() As all cognitive systems strive to reduce their uncertainty about future outcomes, they face a critical constraint: Reducing uncertainty requires cerebral energy. Applied to our everyday life, this means that we feel uncertain, when we anticipate that outcomes will turn out to be something other than expected – and that we are unable to avoid surprise. The ‘free energy principle’ rests upon the fact that self-organizing biological agents resist a tendency to disorder and must therefore minimize the entropy of their sensory states. We address three questions: What is uncertainty? What does it do to us? What are our resources to master it? Mathematically speaking, uncertainty is entropy or ‘expected surprise’. Here we present an information-theoretic approach – based on the ‘free energy principle’ – defining the essence of stress namely, uncertainty. ![]() The term ‘stress’ – coined in 1936 – has many definitions, but until now has lacked a theoretical foundation. ![]()
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