Brain states are inherently labile, with a complexity and transient that renders their invariant characteristics elusive. The neural mechanism distinguishing conscious and non-conscious processes is a crucial issue in cognitive neuroscience. The free-energy principle says that any self-organizing system in equilibrium with its environment must minimize its free energy. Mathematically it means that the probability of these (interoceptive and exteroceptive) sensory states must have low entropy. The posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) is reciprocally connected to the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), and both are parts of the brain’s default system, hypothesized to attend to internal body and mental states. Stronger evidence that event segmentation is automatic comes from implicit behavioral measures and also from neurophysiological measures.

default mode network, nonlinearity, the free energy principle, inference machine, meaning segmentation automata