Karl John Friston FRS FMedSci FRSB (born 12 July 1959) is a British

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist who has specialised knowledge in neuroscience, a branch of biology that deals with the physiology, biochemistry, psychology, anatomy and molecular biology of neurons, neural circuits, and glial ...

and theoretician at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. He is an authority on

brain imaging Neuroimaging is the use of quantitative (computational) techniques to study the structure and function of the central nervous system, developed as an objective way of scientifically studying the healthy human brain in a non-invasive manner. Incre ...

and theoretical neuroscience, especially the use of physics-inspired statistical methods to model neuroimaging data and other random dynamical systems. He is a key architect of the free energy principle and active inference. In imaging neuroscience he is best known for statistical parametric mapping and dynamic causal modelling. In October 2022, he joined VERSES Inc, a California-based cognitive computing company focusing on artificial intelligence designed using the principles of active inference, as Chief Scientist.
Friston is one of the most highly cited scientists of all time and in 2016 was ranked No. 1 by Semantic Scholar in the list of top 10 most influential neuroscientists.

Education

Karl Friston attended the Ellesmere Port Grammar School, later renamed Whitby Comprehensive, from 1970–1977. Friston studied

natural sciences Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...

(physics and psychology) at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

in 1980, and completed his medical studies at

King's College Hospital King's College Hospital is a major teaching hospital and major trauma centre in Denmark Hill, Camberwell in the London Borough of Lambeth, referred to locally and by staff simply as "King's" or abbreviated internally to "KCH". It is managed b ...

, London.

Career

Friston subsequently qualified under the Oxford University Rotational Training Scheme in Psychiatry, and is now a Professor of Neuroscience at

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

. He was a Wellcome Trust Principal Fellow and is currently Scientific Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging. He also holds an honorary consultant post at the

National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (informally the National Hospital or Queen Square) is a neurological hospital in Queen Square, London. It is part of the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. It was the ...

. He invented statistical parametric mapping: SPM is an international standard for analysing imaging data and rests on the

general linear model The general linear model or general multivariate regression model is a compact way of simultaneously writing several multiple linear regression models. In that sense it is not a separate statistical linear model. The various multiple linear regr ...

and

random field In physics and mathematics, a random field is a random function over an arbitrary domain (usually a multi-dimensional space such as \mathbb^n). That is, it is a function f(x) that takes on a random value at each point x \in \mathbb^n(or some other ...

theory (developed with Keith Worsley). In 1994 his group developed

voxel-based morphometry Voxel-based morphometry is a computational approach to neuroanatomy that measures differences in local concentrations of brain tissue, through a voxel-wise comparison of multiple brain images. In traditional morphometry, volume of the whole br ...

. VBM detects differences in neuroanatomy and is used clinically and as a surrogate in genetic studies. These technical contributions were motivated by schizophrenia research and theoretical studies of value-learning (with Gerry Edelman). In 1995, this work was formulated as the dysconnection hypothesis of schizophrenia (with

Chris Frith Christopher Donald Frith, (born 16 March 1942) is a psychologist and professor emeritus at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London. Visiting Professor at the Interacting Minds Centre at Aarhus University, Resear ...

). In 2003, he invented dynamic causal modelling (DCM), which is used to infer the architecture of distributed systems like the brain. Mathematical contributions include Variational Laplace and

Generalized filtering Generalized filtering is a generic Bayesian filtering scheme for nonlinear state-space models. It is based on a variational principle of least action, formulated in generalized coordinates of motion. Note that "generalized coordinates of motion" a ...

, which use

variational Bayesian methods Variational Bayesian methods are a family of techniques for approximating intractable integrals arising in Bayesian inference and machine learning. They are typically used in complex statistical models consisting of observed variables (usually ...

for time-series analysis. Friston is principally known for models of functional integration in the human brain and the principles that underlie neuronal interactions. His main contribution to theoretical neurobiology is a variational free energy principle ( Active inference in the Bayesian brain). According to

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes ...

, Friston's

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as ...

is 255. In 2020 he applied dynamic causal modelling as a Systems biology approach to Epidemiological modelling. He subsequently became a member of Independent SAGE, an independent, public-facing alternative to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

government advisory body

Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) is a British Government body that advises central government in emergencies. It is usually chaired by the United Kingdom's Chief Scientific Adviser, currently Sir Patrick Vallance. Speciali ...

. In 2022, Friston became the Chief Scientist at the California-based artificial intelligence company VERSES.

Awards and achievements

In 1996, Friston received the first Young Investigators Award in Human Brain Mapping, and was elected a Fellow of the

Academy of Medical Sciences The Academy of Medical Sciences is an organisation established in the UK in 1998. It is one of the four UK National Academies, the others being the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society. Its mission is to adv ...

(1999) in recognition of contributions to the bio-medical sciences. In 2000 he was President of the international

Organization for Human Brain Mapping The Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) is an organization of scientists with the main aim of organizing an annual meeting ("Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping"). The organization was established in 1995 at the fir ...

. In 2003 he was awarded the Minerva Golden Brain Award and was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 2006 and received a

Collège de France The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment ('' grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris n ...

Medal in 2008. His nomination for the

reads He became of Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2012, received the

Weldon Memorial Prize The Weldon Memorial Prize, also known as the Weldon Memorial Prize and Medal, is given yearly by the University of Oxford. The prize is to be awarded without regard to nationality or membership of any University to the person who, in the judgeme ...

and Medal in 2013 for contributions to mathematical biology and was elected as a member of EMBO in 2014 and the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

in 2015. He was the 2016 recipient of the Charles Branch Award for unparalleled breakthroughs in Brain Research and the Glass Brain Award from the

. He holds Honorary Doctorates from the universities of York, Zurich, Liège and Radboud University.

References

External links

* Karl J. Friston
The mathematics of mind-time
''

Aeon The word aeon , also spelled eon (in American and Australian English), originally meant "life", "vital force" or "being", "generation" or "a period of time", though it tended to be translated as "age" in the sense of "ages", "forever", "timele ...

'', (May 2017) * Versita.com (Emerging science publishers) http://versita.com/friston/ * Interview on Spain TV program (English) http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/redes/redes-formula-del-cerebro-vo/1253761/ * Karl J. Friston - Podcast Interview on the Free Energy Principle & Schizophrenia (English) https://externalmedicinepodcast.com/karlfriston/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Friston, Karl John 1959 births Alumni of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge British neuroscientists Academics of University College London Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) Fellows of the Royal Society Living people Fellows of the Royal Society of Biology