In Search for the Neural Mechanisms of Individual Development: Behavior-Driven Differential Hebbian Learning

Abstract

When Donald Hebb published his 1949 book "The Organization of Behavior" he opened a new way of thinking in theoretical neuroscience that, in retrospective, is very close to contemporary ideas in self-organization. His metaphor of "wiring" together what "fires together" matches very closely the common paradigm that global organization can derive from simple local rules. While ingenious at his time and inspiring the research over decades, the results still fall short of the expectations. For instance, unsupervised as they are, such neural mechanisms should be able to explain and realize the self-organized acquisition of sensorimotor competencies. This paper proposes a new synaptic law that replaces Hebb's original metaphor by that of "chaining together" what "changes together." Starting from differential Hebbian learning, the new rule grounds the behavior of the agent directly in the internal synaptic dynamics. Therefore, one may call this a behavior-driven synaptic plasticity. Neurorobotics is an ideal testing ground for this new, unsupervised learning rule. This paper focuses on the close coupling between body, control, and environment in challenging physical settings. The examples demonstrate how the new synaptic mechanism induces a self-determined "search and converge" strategy in behavior space, generating spontaneously a variety of sensorimotor competencies. The emerging behavior patterns are qualified by involving body and environment in an irreducible conjunction with the internal mechanism. The results may not only be of immediate interest for the further development of embodied intelligence. They also offer a new view on the role of self-learning processes in natural evolution and in the brain. Videos and further details may be found under http://robot.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/research/ supplementary/NeuroAutonomy/.

Closed-loop Robots Driven by Short-Term Synaptic Plasticity: Emergent Explorative vs. Limit-Cycle Locomotion

“…Distinct principles such as predictive information (Ay et al, 2008 ), surprise minimization (Friston, 2011 ), chaos control (Steingrube et al, 2010 ), empowerment (Salge et al, 2014 ), homeokinesis (Der and Martius, 2012 ), cheap design (Montúfar et al, 2015 ), and curiosity (Frank et al, 2014 ) have been studied in this context. Behavior, resulting from guided self organization (Prokopenko, 2009 ) or autonomous adaption (Chiel and Beer, 1997 ), may be generated in addition through suitable synaptic (Der and Martius, 2015 ; Der, 2016 ) and intrinsic (Sándor et al, 2015 ) plasticity rules.…”

Self-Organized Behavior Generation for Musculoskeletal Robots

“…While this is often ticked-off as superfluous, to be replaced by well known methods like motor babbling, SO definitely has its realm if systems become larger. This has been demonstrated by a number of successful examples (Der and Martius, 2012 , 2013 , 2015 ; Der, 2016 ) attributing SO a much wider range of applicability. We claim that the results of this paper are a further step as they extend that range to composed systems consisting of the actual robot connected to a subsystem with an unknown internal dynamics.…”

Erken Çocukluk Döneminde Duyu Eğitimi ve Nörobilim

“…Sonrasında, iki bilim insanının sinirbilimin gelişimi üzerinde çok önemli etkileri olmuştur. Birincisi, tip II koşullu refleksleri keşfetmesiyle tanınan Jerzy Konorski (1903Konorski ( -1973 (Bijoch, Borczyk ve Czajkowski, 2020), ikincisi ise insan ve hayvanlar da öğrenme alanında uzman olan Donald Hebb (1904Hebb ( -1985'dir (Der, 2016). Her ikisi de çalışmalarında, yüksek zihinsel yetenekler ve sinirsel aktivite arasında bir bağlantı olduğunu gösteren sonuçlar ortaya koymuşlardır.…”

“…Hebb genel olarak; 'şema' kavramını kişinin duyuları aracılığı ile aldıkları bilgiyi öznel olarak yapılandırması ve algı sürecindeki bazı özellikleri temsil etmesi olarak açıklamıştır (Akt. Der, 2016). 'Faz dizisi' kavramını ise, 'duyudan düşünceye ya da bir düşünce zincirini temsil eden zamansal bir dizi ya da hücre grupları dizisidir' olarak açıklamıştır.…”