Thinking About Thinking: Fellowship Seminars with Professor Karl Friston FRS
✦ Thinking About Thinking: Fellowship Seminars
We are delighted to announce that the next speaker in the Thinking About Thinking Fellowship Seminar Series will be Professor Karl Friston FRS, one of the world's most influential theoretical neuroscientists and the originator of the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference.
𝑺𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒓 𝒕𝒊𝒕𝒍𝒆: I am therefore I think
𝑫𝒂𝒕𝒆: Wednesday, 22 July 2026
𝑻𝒊𝒎𝒆: 6:00pm BST
𝑳𝒐𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏: https://riverside.com/webinar/registration/eyJldmVudElkIjoiNmE0YTNiNTkxYjZiYzMyYWRkOTZmMjVhIiwic2x1ZyI6InRoaW5raW5nLWFib3V0LXRoaW5raW5ncy1zdHVkaW8ifQ==
In this seminar, Professor Friston will present an overview of the Free Energy Principle, one of the most ambitious theoretical frameworks in contemporary neuroscience.
The talk explores how living systems—from single cells to the human brain—can be understood as continually inferring the hidden causes of their sensory experiences. Drawing together mathematics, neuroscience, physics, and philosophy, Professor Friston will explain why the very existence of a living system implies the continual maintenance of probabilistic beliefs about the world.
The seminar will examine how these ideas give rise to predictive coding, hierarchical brain architectures, and active inference, before concluding with simulations that illustrate the epistemic behaviour emerging from these principles.
𝑨𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒌𝒆𝒓:
Professor Karl Friston is Professor at the Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London, and Honorary Consultant at The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.
His contributions have fundamentally shaped modern computational neuroscience. He developed Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM), Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM), Dynamic Causal Modelling (DCM), and the Free Energy Principle, frameworks that have transformed the study of brain function, perception, and learning. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and recipient of numerous international awards recognising his lifetime contributions to neuroscience, mathematics, and brain imaging.
𝑰𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒚: Professor James Whittington, Co-Founder and CSO, Thinking About Thinking
𝑺𝒖𝒑𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒚: XTX Markets | Cooley LLP
For a limited time, the Fellowship Seminar Series remains open to the wider Thinking About Thinking community.
Whether you are interested in AI, neuroscience, mathematics, cognitive science, or the fundamental principles underlying intelligence itself, we would love for you to join us.
Bring your most insightful questions.