Figure 3.

MDS visualization of the cognitive geometry induced by free energy in a Moore 11 × 11 gridworld. As β decreases, the corners migrate towards each other and the topology morphs from a flat grid to a mesh wrapped over a ball. (a) At β = 100, the free energies approach the optimal value function V*. With the reduction of β, (b) β = 5, (c) β = 0.3 and (d) β = 0.1. As a result of the constrained information processing, the policy results in similar actions taken in multiple states, i.e. the agent moves in consistent directions across the grid. The routes to the corners and along the edges are more informationally efficient, with the effect that corners migrate towards each other, despite being farthest away from each other in the original grid distance.