Bayesian Predictive Coding

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Tschantz, Alexander, Koudahl, Magnus, Linander, Hampus, Da Costa, Lancelot, Heins, Conor, Beck, Jeff, Buckley, Christopher
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Tschantz, Alexander
Koudahl, Magnus
Linander, Hampus
Da Costa, Lancelot
Heins, Conor
Beck, Jeff
Buckley, Christopher
author_facet Tschantz, Alexander
Koudahl, Magnus
Linander, Hampus
Da Costa, Lancelot
Heins, Conor
Beck, Jeff
Buckley, Christopher
contents Predictive coding (PC) is an influential theory of information processing in the brain, providing a biologically plausible alternative to backpropagation. It is motivated in terms of Bayesian inference, as hidden states and parameters are optimised via gradient descent on variational free energy. However, implementations of PC rely on maximum \textit{a posteriori} (MAP) estimates of hidden states and maximum likelihood (ML) estimates of parameters, limiting their ability to quantify epistemic uncertainty. In this work, we investigate a Bayesian extension to PC that estimates a posterior distribution over network parameters. This approach, termed Bayesian Predictive coding (BPC), preserves the locality of PC and results in closed-form Hebbian weight updates. Compared to PC, our BPC algorithm converges in fewer epochs in the full-batch setting and remains competitive in the mini-batch setting. Additionally, we demonstrate that BPC offers uncertainty quantification comparable to existing methods in Bayesian deep learning, while also improving convergence properties. Together, these results suggest that BPC provides a biologically plausible method for Bayesian learning in the brain, as well as an attractive approach to uncertainty quantification in deep learning.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_24016
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bayesian Predictive Coding
Tschantz, Alexander
Koudahl, Magnus
Linander, Hampus
Da Costa, Lancelot
Heins, Conor
Beck, Jeff
Buckley, Christopher
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Predictive coding (PC) is an influential theory of information processing in the brain, providing a biologically plausible alternative to backpropagation. It is motivated in terms of Bayesian inference, as hidden states and parameters are optimised via gradient descent on variational free energy. However, implementations of PC rely on maximum \textit{a posteriori} (MAP) estimates of hidden states and maximum likelihood (ML) estimates of parameters, limiting their ability to quantify epistemic uncertainty. In this work, we investigate a Bayesian extension to PC that estimates a posterior distribution over network parameters. This approach, termed Bayesian Predictive coding (BPC), preserves the locality of PC and results in closed-form Hebbian weight updates. Compared to PC, our BPC algorithm converges in fewer epochs in the full-batch setting and remains competitive in the mini-batch setting. Additionally, we demonstrate that BPC offers uncertainty quantification comparable to existing methods in Bayesian deep learning, while also improving convergence properties. Together, these results suggest that BPC provides a biologically plausible method for Bayesian learning in the brain, as well as an attractive approach to uncertainty quantification in deep learning.
title Bayesian Predictive Coding
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.24016