An embodied biologically constrained model of foraging: from classical and operant conditioning to adaptive real-world behavior in DAC-X

Maffei, Giovanni; Santos-Pata, Diogo; Marcos, Encarni; Sánchez-Fibla, Martí; Verschure, Paul F. M. J.

doi:10.1016/j.neunet.2015.10.004

Cited by 32 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 102 publications

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“…On the other hand, components of the architecture and their basic operating principles have been linked to the mammalian brain through anatomically and physiologically constrained models [27]. These two lines of the investigation have been recently integrated into a first embodied whole brain model (DACX) comprising detailed models of core brain structures including: cerebellum, entorhinal cortex, hippocampus and prefrontal/ premotor cortex (figure 2, [35]). We will later again use the DACX model to demonstrate the quale parsing methodology.…”

Section: Introduction 'That Is Very Hokey!'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Synthetic consciousness: the distributed adaptive control perspective

Verschure

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One contribution of 13 to a theme issue 'The major synthetic evolutionary transitions'. Understanding the nature of consciousness is one of the grand outstanding scientific challenges. The fundamental methodological problem is how phenomenal first person experience can be accounted for in a third person verifiable form, while the conceptual challenge is to both define its function and physical realization. The distributed adaptive control theory of consciousness (DACtoc) proposes answers to these three challenges. The methodological challenge is answered relative to the hard problem and DACtoc proposes that it can be addressed using a convergent synthetic methodology using the analysis of synthetic biologically grounded agents, or quale parsing. DACtoc hypothesizes that consciousness in both its primary and secondary forms serves the ability to deal with the hidden states of the world and emerged during the Cambrian period, affording stable multi-agent environments to emerge. The process of consciousness is an autonomous virtualization memory, which serializes and unifies the parallel and subconscious simulations of the hidden states of the world that are largely due to other agents and the self with the objective to extract norms. These norms are in turn projected as value onto the parallel simulation and control systems that are driving action. This functional hypothesis is mapped onto the brainstem, midbrain and the thalamo-cortical and cortico-cortical systems and analysed with respect to our understanding of deficits of consciousness. Subsequently, some of the implications and predictions of DACtoc are outlined, in particular, the prediction that normative bootstrapping of conscious agents is predicated on an intentionality prior. In the view advanced here, human consciousness constitutes the ultimate evolutionary transition by allowing agents to become autonomous with respect to their evolutionary priors leading to a post-biological Anthropocene.This article is part of the themed issue 'The major synthetic evolutionary transitions'.

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Section: Introduction 'That Is Very Hokey!'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Synthetic consciousness: the distributed adaptive control perspective

Verschure

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…Similarly, desert-hamsters exploit their navigational apparatus to successfully store resources at their home location. However, while the neural circuitry involved in mammalian navigation is relatively well understood and further supported by computational models implementing the neural components necessary for hoarding behavior 41 , the computational processes involved in insect navigation is far-less understood. Therefore, how much of those mammalian neural components can be validated into a biologically plausible insect cognitive-architecture, still remains an open question.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insect behavioral evidence of spatial memories during environmental reconfiguration

Santos-Pata

Escuredo

Mathews

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Insects are great explorers, able to navigate through long-distance trajectories and successfully find their way back. Their navigational routes cross dynamic environments suggesting adaptation to novel configurations. Arthropods and vertebrates share neural organizational principles and it has been shown that rodents modulate their neural spatial representation accordingly with environmental changes. However, it is unclear whether insects reflexively adapt to environmental changes or retain memory traces of previously explored situations. We sought to disambiguate between insect behavior at environmental novel situations and reconfiguration conditions. An immersive mixed-reality multi-sensory setup was built to replicate multisensory cues. We have designed an experimental setup where female crickets Gryllus Bimaculatus were trained to move towards paired auditory and visual cues during primarily phonotactic driven behavior. We hypothesized that insects were capable of identifying sensory modifications in known environments. Our results show that, regardless of the animals history, novel situation conditions did not compromise the animals performance and navigational directionality towards a novel target location. However, in trials where visual and auditory stimuli were spatially decoupled, the animals heading variability towards a previously known location significantly increased. Our findings showed that crickets are able to behaviorally manifest environmental reconfiguration, suggesting the encoding for spatial representation.

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“…In this study, we use a previously described model of grid cells formation based on attractor dynamics with synaptic connectivity following a toroidal topology (Guanella et al, 2007; Pata et al, 2014; Maffei et al, 2015). The model comprises five subpopulations of grid cells, each with a specific grid scale, mimicking the physiological properties of progressive scale increases along the dorsal-to-ventral axis (Kjelstrup et al, 2008).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To examine how a progressive increase in border cells' scale along the dorsal-to-ventral axis of the MEC would affect grid cells' error minimization, we built on a previously presented computational model of grid cells accounting for this scaling property combined with an activity signal mechanism mimicking the role of border cells involved in error minimization of path-integrating grid cells (see Guanella et al, 2007; Pata et al, 2014; Maffei et al, 2015). By observing the effects of multiple border cells' scaling factors, we could test whether border cells with distinct scales would optimize error minimization of grid cells.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Size Matters: How Scaling Affects the Interaction between Grid and Border Cells

Santos-Pata

Zucca

Low

et al. 2017

Front. Comput. Neurosci.

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Many hippocampal cell types are characterized by a progressive increase in scale along the dorsal-to-ventral axis, such as in the cases of head-direction, grid and place cells. Also located in the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC), border cells would be expected to benefit from such scale modulations. However, this phenomenon has not been experimentally observed. Grid cells in the MEC of mammals integrate velocity related signals to map the environment with characteristic hexagonal tessellation patterns. Due to the noisy nature of these input signals, path integration processes tend to accumulate errors as animals explore the environment, leading to a loss of grid-like activity. It has been suggested that border-to-grid cells' associations minimize the accumulated grid cells' error when rodents explore enclosures. Thus, the border-grid interaction for error minimization is a suitable scenario to study the effects of border cell scaling within the context of spatial representation. In this study, we computationally address the question of (i) border cells' scale from the perspective of their role in maintaining the regularity of grid cells' firing fields, as well as (ii) what are the underlying mechanisms of grid-border associations relative to the scales of both grid and border cells. Our results suggest that for optimal contribution to grid cells' error minimization, border cells should express smaller firing fields relative to those of the associated grid cells, which is consistent with the hypothesis of border cells functioning as spatial anchoring signals.

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An embodied biologically constrained model of foraging: from classical and operant conditioning to adaptive real-world behavior in DAC-X

Cited by 32 publications

References 102 publications

Synthetic consciousness: the distributed adaptive control perspective

Synthetic consciousness: the distributed adaptive control perspective

Insect behavioral evidence of spatial memories during environmental reconfiguration

Size Matters: How Scaling Affects the Interaction between Grid and Border Cells

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