The default-mode, ego-functions and free-energy: a neurobiological account of Freudian ideas

Freudian constructs may have neurobiological substrates. Descriptions of primary and secondary processes align with self-organized activity in hierarchical cortical systems, and descriptions of the ego align with functions of the default-mode network and its exchanges with subordinate brain systems. This account views the brain as a hierarchical inference machine that minimizes free-energy, a process formally similar to Freudian energy treatments. The synthesis is substantiated by showing that descriptions of the primary process are consistent with the phenomenology and neurophysiology of rapid eye movement sleep, early acute psychotic states, temporal lobe epilepsy auras, and hallucinogenic drug states.

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Abstract

This article explores the notion that Freudian constructs may have neurobiological substrates. Specifically, we propose that Freud's descriptions of the primary and secondary processes are consistent with self-organized activity in hierarchical cortical systems and that his descriptions of the ego are consistent with the functions of the default-mode and its reciprocal exchanges with subordinate brain systems. This neurobiological account rests on a view of the brain as a hierarchical inference or Helmholtz machine. In this view, large-scale intrinsic networks occupy supraordinate levels of hierarchical brain systems that try to optimize their representation of the sensorium. This optimization has been formulated as minimizing a free-energy; a process that is formally similar to the treatment of energy in Freudian formulations. We substantiate this synthesis by showing that Freud's descriptions of the primary process are consistent with the phenomenology and neurophysiology of rapid eye movement sleep, the early and acute psychotic state, the aura of temporal lobe epilepsy and hallucinogenic drug states.