# Modeling Autonomous Shifts Between Focus State and Mind-Wandering Using a Predictive-Coding-Inspired Variational RNN Model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.15620 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.15620/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 3 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Dec 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Auto-Encoding Variational Bayes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6114/) (2013)
- [Tracking Emotions: Intrinsic Motivation Grounded on Multi-Level Prediction Error Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.14632/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The current study investigates possible neural mechanisms underling autonomous shifts between focus state and mind-wandering by conducting model simulation experiments. On this purpose, we modeled perception processes of continuous sensory sequences using our previous proposed variational RNN model which was developed based on the free energy principle. The current study extended this model by introducing an adaptation mechanism of a meta-level parameter, referred to as the meta-prior w, which regulates the complexity term in the free energy. Our simulation experiments demonstrated that autonomous shifts between focused perception and mind-wandering take place when w switches between low and high values associated with decrease and increase of the average reconstruction error over the past window. In particular, high w prioritized top-down predictions while low w emphasized bottom-up sensations. This paper explores how our experiment results align with existing studies and highlights their potential for future research.