Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere (TAME): an experimentally- grounded framework for understanding diverse bodies and minds

Levin, Michael E.

doi:10.31234/osf.io/t6e8p

Cited by 4 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 84 publications

(102 reference statements)

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“…The morphogenetic process exhibits interesting stress dynamics, consistent with the proposals [48] that homeostatic loops are driven by stress as a reflection of delta from setpoint, and that complex setpoints such as tissue-level morphogenetic patterns could arise from cells sharing stress information to optimize plasticity and coordinate in more complex problem spaces. Thus, we next studied the functional role of stress in the emergent morphogenesis we observed.…”

Section: Stress: Different Use-casessupporting

confidence: 75%

“…This ability to move away from the goal in order to reach a better solution later (following not only minimum-distance paths) is an important capability of some cognitive systems. Degrees of this kind of "delayed gratification" in cybernetic systems enable more sophisticated behavior, along the continuum from simple "roll downhill" mechanisms to complex problem-solving systems [48]. Interestingly, neither of these things were directly selected for during the evolutionary cycle, revealing how some capabilities of multi-scale homeostatic systems can emerge as a kind of "free lunch", without direct selection pressure [21,40].…”

Section: Experimental Results On Repatterning Of Planariamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…-are all coded by genomes through evolution. Cells don't know the origin of a given signal once it's inside the cell; it has been suggested that this "wiping property" enables a kind of shared memory that is essential for the scaling of small agents into larger intelligences [48]. The cells have a minimal memory of the past and have access to their stress and energy levels, and their states, at time t and t − 1 (see Algorithm 1).…”

Section: Related Work: In Silico Embryogenymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Anatomical homeostasis without stress is possible on the French flag problem but exploiting spatial propagation of stress information seems to increase adaptive fitness by improving performance in scenarios where the normal process of morphogenesis can be impacted by external perturbations. As has been suggested [48], stress is an ideal parameter for evolution to exploit as a representation of the error in homeostatic contexts, and the drive to reduce stress could then implement "grow and remodel until complete" in regenerative settings [48].…”

Section: Evolution Exploits the Stress System But Anxiolytics Do Not ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We do provide the cells with gap junctions (electrochemical synapses [59,63]), through which they can share state signals. We also include a mechanism for stress signals (initially, intracellular detectors of out-of-homeostasis states) to be propagated outward from stressed cells, as predicted by the TAME framework [48].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The scaling of goals via homeostasis: an evolutionary simulation, experiment and analysis

Pio-Lopez¹,

Bischof²,

LaPalme³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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All cognitive agents are composite beings. Specifically, complex living agents consist of cells, which are themselves competent sub-agents navigating physiological and metabolic spaces. Behavior science, evolutionary developmental biology, and the field of machine intelligence all seek an answer to the scaling of biological cognition: what evolutionary dynamics enable individual cells to integrate their activities to result in the emergence of a novel, higher-level intelligence that has goals and competencies that belong to it and not to its parts? Here, we report the results of simulations based on the TAME framework, which proposes that evolution pivoted the collective intelligence of cells during morphogenesis of the body into traditional behavioral intelligence by scaling up the goal states at the center of homeostatic processes. We tested the hypothesis that a minimal evolutionary framework is sufficient for small, low-level setpoints of metabolic homeostasis in cells to scale up into collectives (tissues) which solve a problem in morphospace: the organization of a body-wide positional information axis (the classic French Flag problem). We found that these emergent morphogenetic agents exhibit a number of predicted features, including the use of stress propagation dynamics to achieve its target morphology as well as the ability to recover from perturbation (robustness) and long-term stability (even though neither of these was directly selected for). Moreover, we observed unexpected behavior of sudden remodeling long after the system stabilizes. We tested this prediction in a biological system -regenerating planaria -and observed a very similar phenomenon. We propose that this system is a first step toward a quantitative understanding of how evolution scales minimal goal-directed behavior (homeostatic loops) into higher-level problem-solving agents in morphogenetic and other spaces.

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Section: Stress: Different Use-casessupporting

confidence: 75%

Section: Experimental Results On Repatterning Of Planariamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Related Work: In Silico Embryogenymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Evolution Exploits the Stress System But Anxiolytics Do Not ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

The scaling of goals via homeostasis: an evolutionary simulation, experiment and analysis

Pio-Lopez¹,

Bischof²,

LaPalme³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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An ability to respond begins with inner alignment: How phase synchronisation effects transitions to higher levels of agency

Tissot,

Levin,

Buckley

et al. 2024

Preprint

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How do multiple active components at one level of organisation create agential wholes at higher levels of organisation? For example, in organismic development, how does the multi-scale autonomy of the organism arise from the interactions of the molecules, cells and tissues that an organism contains? And, in the major evolutionary transitions, how does a multicellular organism, for example, arise as an evolutionary unit from the selective interests of its unicellular ancestors? We utilise computational models as a way to think about this general question. We take a deliberately minimalistic notion of an agent: a competency to take one of two possible actions to minimise stress. Helping ourselves to this behaviour at the microscale, we focus on conditions where this same type of agency appears spontaneously at a higher level of organisation. We find that a simple process of positive feedback on the timing of individual responses, loosely analogous to the natural phase synchronisation of weakly coupled oscillators, causes such a transition in behaviour. The emergent collectives that arise become, quite suddenly, able to respond to their external stresses in the same (minimal) sense as the original microscale units. This effects a dramatic rescaling of the system behaviour, and a quantifiable increase in problem-solving competency, serving as a model of how higher-level agency emerges from a pool of lower-level agents or active matter. We discuss how this dynamical ‘waking-up’ of higher-level collectives, through the alignment of their internal dynamics, might relate to reproductive/cell-cycle synchronisation in evolutionary transitions and development.

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Active inference, morphogenesis, and computational psychiatry

Pio-Lopez

Kuchling²,

Tung³

et al. 2022

Front. Comput. Neurosci.

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Active inference is a leading theory in neuroscience that provides a simple and neuro-biologically plausible account of how action and perception are coupled in producing (Bayes) optimal behavior; and has been recently used to explain a variety of psychopathological conditions. In parallel, morphogenesis has been described as the behavior of a (non-neural) cellular collective intelligence solving problems in anatomical morphospace. In this article, we establish a link between the domains of cell biology and neuroscience, by analyzing disorders of morphogenesis as disorders of (active) inference. The aim of this article is three-fold. We want to: (i) reveal a connection between disorders of morphogenesis and disorders of active inference as apparent in psychopathological conditions; (ii) show how disorders of morphogenesis can be simulated using active inference; (iii) suggest that active inference can shed light on developmental defects or aberrant morphogenetic processes, seen as disorders of information processing, and perhaps suggesting novel intervention and repair strategies. We present four simulations illustrating application of these ideas to cellular behavior during morphogenesis. Three of the simulations show that the same forms of aberrant active inference (e.g., deficits of sensory attenuation and low sensory precision) that have been used to explain psychopathological conditions (e.g., schizophrenia and autism) also produce familiar disorders of development and morphogenesis when implemented at the level of the collective behavior of a group of cells. The fourth simulation involves two cells with too high precision, in which we show that the reduction of concentration signaling and sensitivity to the signals of other cells treats the development defect. Finally, we present the results of an experimental test of one of the model's predictions in early Xenopus laevis embryos: thioridazine (a dopamine antagonist that may reduce sensory precision in biological systems) induced developmental (anatomical) defects as predicted. The use of conceptual and empirical tools from neuroscience to understand the morphogenetic behavior of pre-neural agents offers the possibility of new approaches in regenerative medicine and evolutionary developmental biology.

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Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere (TAME): an experimentally- grounded framework for understanding diverse bodies and minds

Cited by 4 publications

References 84 publications

The scaling of goals via homeostasis: an evolutionary simulation, experiment and analysis

The scaling of goals via homeostasis: an evolutionary simulation, experiment and analysis

An ability to respond begins with inner alignment: How phase synchronisation effects transitions to higher levels of agency

Active inference, morphogenesis, and computational psychiatry

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