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Olfactory receptor usage is highly heterogeneous, with some receptor types being orders of magnitude more abundant than others. We propose an explanation for this striking fact: the receptor distribution is tuned to maximally represent…
A model of an organism as an autonomous intelligent system has been proposed. This model was used to analyze learning of an organism in various environmental conditions. Processes of learning were divided into two types: strong and weak…
A robotic swarm that is required to operate for long periods in a potentially unknown environment can use both evolution and individual learning methods in order to adapt. However, the role played by the environment in influencing the…
Handedness in humans - better performance using either the left or right hand - is personally familiar, moderately heritable, and regulated by many genes, including those involved in general body symmetry. But behavioral handedness, i.e.…
We present a benchmark study of autonomous, chemical agents exhibiting associative learning of an environmental feature. Associative learning has been widely studied in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, but are most commonly…
The insect olfactory system, which includes the antennal lobe (AL), mushroom body (MB), and ancillary structures, is a relatively simple neural system capable of learning. Its structural features, which are widespread in biological neural…
During contagion phenomena, individuals perceiving a risk of infection commonly adapt their behavior and reduce their exposure. The effects of such adaptive mechanisms have been studied for processes in which pairwise interactions drive…
The reshaping and decorrelation of similar activity patterns by neuronal networks can enhance their discriminability, storage, and retrieval. How can such networks learn to decorrelate new complex patterns, as they arise in the olfactory…
Animals need to devise strategies to maximize returns while interacting with their environment based on incoming noisy sensory observations. Task-relevant states, such as the agent's location within an environment or the presence of a…
Animals are equipped with a rich innate repertoire of sensory, behavioral and motor skills, which allows them to interact with the world immediately after birth. At the same time, many behaviors are highly adaptive and can be tailored to…
During the continuous evolution of one organism's ancestry, its genes accumulate extensive experiences and knowledge, enabling newborn descendants to rapidly adapt to their specific environments. Motivated by this observation, we propose a…
Commonly recognized evolutionarily relevant effects of sexual reproduction include increased diversity, accelerated adaptation, and constrained accumulation of deleterious mutations, along with a secondary effect of species genotype…
The olfactory system of male moths is exquisitely sensitive to pheromones emitted by females and transported in the environment by atmospheric turbulence. Moths respond to minute amounts of pheromones and their behavior is sensitive to the…
The relationship between traits that influence pathogen virulence and transmission is part of the central canon of the evolution and ecology of infectious disease. However, identifying directional and mechanistic relationships among traits…
Developing robotic agents that can perform well in diverse environments while showing a variety of behaviors is a key challenge in AI and robotics. Traditional reinforcement learning (RL) methods often create agents that specialize in…
The reward system is one of the fundamental drivers of animal behaviors and is critical for survival and reproduction. Despite its importance, the problem of how the reward system has evolved is underexplored. In this paper, we try to…
Associative learning is one of the key mechanisms displayed by living organisms in order to adapt to their changing environments. It was early recognized to be a general trait of complex multicellular organisms but also found in "simpler"…
Disgust is a basic emotion that serves to avoid contaminants, and is central to the behavioural immune system. While disgust-motivated avoidance occurs in bonobos and chimpanzees, humans show uniquely high levels of contamination…
The fruit fly Drosophila is a classic model organism to study adaptation as well as the relationship between genetic variation and phenotypes. Although associated bacterial communities might be important for many aspects of Drosophila…
Eating behaviors among a large population of children are studied as a dynamic process driven by nonlinear interactions in the sociocultural school environment. The impact of food association learning on diet dynamics, inspired by a pilot…