Related papers: Towards the Self-constructive Brain: emergence of …

The functioning of an organ such as the brain emerges from interactions between its constituent parts. Further, this interaction is not immutable in time but rather unfolds in a succession of patterns, thereby allowing the brain to adapt to…

An evolving population, in which individual members (`agents') adapt their behaviour according to past experience, is of central importance to many disciplines. Because of their limited knowledge and capabilities, agents are forced to make…

To explain consciousness as a physical process we must acknowledge the role of energy in the brain. Energetic activity is fundamental to all physical processes and causally drives biological behaviour. Recent neuroscientific evidence can be…

We treat the problem of autonomous acquisition of manipulation skills where problem-solving strategies are initially available only for a narrow range of situations. We propose to extend the range of solvable situations by autonomous…

Many classical models of collective behavior assume that emergent dynamics result from external and observable interactions among individuals. However, how collective dynamics in human populations depend on the internal psychological…

Adult neurogenesis has long been documented in the vertebrate brain, and recently even in humans. Although it has been conjectured for many years that its functional role is related to the renewing of memories, no clear mechanism as to how…

A robot operating in isolation needs to reason over the uncertainty in its model of the world and adapt its own actions to account for this uncertainty. Similarly, a robot interacting with people needs to reason over its uncertainty over…

Social institutions are systems of shared norms and rules that regulate people's behaviors, often emerging without external enforcement. They provide criteria to distinguish cooperation from defection and establish rules to sustain…

Adaptive networks have the capability to pursue solutions of global stochastic optimization problems by relying only on local interactions within neighborhoods. The diffusion of information through repeated interactions allows for globally…

Normal anxiety is considered an adaptive response to the possible presence of danger, but is susceptible to dysregulation. Anxiety disorders are prevalent at high frequency in contemporary human societies, yet impose substantial disability…

The brain is a highly complex organ consisting of a myriad of subsystems that flexibly interact and adapt over time and context to enable perception, cognition, and behavior. Understanding the multi-scale nature of the brain, i.e., how…

A hallmark of intelligence is the ability to autonomously learn new flexible, cognitive behaviors - that is, behaviors where the appropriate action depends not just on immediate stimuli (as in simple reflexive stimulus-response…

A profound challenge for A-Life is to construct agents whose behavior is 'life-like' in a deep way. We propose an architecture and approach to constructing networks driving artificial agents, using processes analogous to the processes that…

This white paper lays out a vision of research and development in the field of artificial intelligence for the next decade (and beyond). Its denouement is a cyber-physical ecosystem of natural and synthetic sense-making, in which humans are…

Understanding infant development is one of the greatest scientific challenges of contemporary science. A large source of difficulty comes from the fact that the development of skills in infants results from the interactions of multiple…

Understanding the mechanisms behind emergent behaviors in multi-agent systems is critical for advancing fields such as swarm robotics and artificial intelligence. In this study, we investigate how neural networks evolve to control agents'…

We all are fascinated by the phenomena of intelligent behavior, as generated both by our own brains and by the brains of other animals. As physicists we would like to understand if there are some general principles that govern the structure…

Biological neural networks are characterized by their high degree of plasticity, a core property that enables the remarkable adaptability of natural organisms. Importantly, this ability affects both the synaptic strength and the topology of…

By dynamic planning, we refer to the ability of the human brain to infer and impose motor trajectories related to cognitive decisions. A recent paradigm, active inference, brings fundamental insights into the adaptation of biological…

Immersion in a creative task can be an intimate experience. It can feel like a mystery: intangible, inexplicable, and beyond the reach of science. However, science is making exciting headway into understanding creativity. While the mind of…