Biological treatment of information enthalpy

Determine how information enthalpy may be treated by biological neural systems as a resource for prediction, self-regulation, and intelligent behavior.

Background

The paper introduces information enthalpy as a proposed internal resource consisting of structured predictive information that can be acquired, stored, and used by neural systems. The authors contrast this proposed driver with free-energy minimization and argue that it could help explain why biological systems seek structured environmental input rather than merely predictable or low-entropy states.

The abstract explicitly characterizes the account as a conjecture, indicating that the proposed biological interpretation of information enthalpy remains theoretical and requires further validation.

References

We offer a conjecture of how information enthalpy may be treated by neural systems within a biological framework before showing how it may integrate and offer falsifiability to existing approaches such as the Free Energy Principle.

— If the brain were so simple: Information-based drivers of intelligence and their interaction through an n-body-inspired framework  (2610.11142 - Kagan et al., 8 Oct 2026) in Abstract