  Theoretical arguments and empirical evidence in neuroscience suggests that
organisms represent or model their environment by minimizing a variational
free-energy bound on the surprise associated with sensory signals from the
environment. In this paper, we study phase transitions in coupled dissipative
dynamical systems (complex Ginzburg-Landau equations) under a variety of
coupling conditions to model the exchange of a system (agent) with its
environment. We show that arbitrary coupling between sensory signals and the
internal state of a system -- or those between its action and external
(environmental) states -- do not guarantee synchronous dynamics between
external and internal states: the spatial structure and the temporal dynamics
of sensory signals and action (that comprise the system's Markov blanket) have
to be pruned to produce synchrony. This synchrony is necessary for an agent to
infer environmental states -- a pre-requisite for survival. Therefore, such
sentient dynamics, relies primarily on approximate synchronization between the
agent and its niche.
