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Using Strategic Movement to Calibrate a Neural Compass: A Spiking Network for Tracking Head Direction in Rats and Robots
The head direction (HD) system in mammals contains neurons that fire to represent the direction the animal is facing in its environment. The ability of these cells to reliably track head direction even after the removal of external sensory cues implies that the HD system is calibrated to function ef...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2011
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3186777/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21991332 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025687 |
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author | Stratton, Peter Milford, Michael Wyeth, Gordon Wiles, Janet |
author_facet | Stratton, Peter Milford, Michael Wyeth, Gordon Wiles, Janet |
author_sort | Stratton, Peter |
collection | PubMed |
description | The head direction (HD) system in mammals contains neurons that fire to represent the direction the animal is facing in its environment. The ability of these cells to reliably track head direction even after the removal of external sensory cues implies that the HD system is calibrated to function effectively using just internal (proprioceptive and vestibular) inputs. Rat pups and other infant mammals display stereotypical warm-up movements prior to locomotion in novel environments, and similar warm-up movements are seen in adult mammals with certain brain lesion-induced motor impairments. In this study we propose that synaptic learning mechanisms, in conjunction with appropriate movement strategies based on warm-up movements, can calibrate the HD system so that it functions effectively even in darkness. To examine the link between physical embodiment and neural control, and to determine that the system is robust to real-world phenomena, we implemented the synaptic mechanisms in a spiking neural network and tested it on a mobile robot platform. Results show that the combination of the synaptic learning mechanisms and warm-up movements are able to reliably calibrate the HD system so that it accurately tracks real-world head direction, and that calibration breaks down in systematic ways if certain movements are omitted. This work confirms that targeted, embodied behaviour can be used to calibrate neural systems, demonstrates that ‘grounding’ of modelled biological processes in the real world can reveal underlying functional principles (supporting the importance of robotics to biology), and proposes a functional role for stereotypical behaviours seen in infant mammals and those animals with certain motor deficits. We conjecture that these calibration principles may extend to the calibration of other neural systems involved in motion tracking and the representation of space, such as grid cells in entorhinal cortex. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3186777 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2011 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-31867772011-10-11 Using Strategic Movement to Calibrate a Neural Compass: A Spiking Network for Tracking Head Direction in Rats and Robots Stratton, Peter Milford, Michael Wyeth, Gordon Wiles, Janet PLoS One Research Article The head direction (HD) system in mammals contains neurons that fire to represent the direction the animal is facing in its environment. The ability of these cells to reliably track head direction even after the removal of external sensory cues implies that the HD system is calibrated to function effectively using just internal (proprioceptive and vestibular) inputs. Rat pups and other infant mammals display stereotypical warm-up movements prior to locomotion in novel environments, and similar warm-up movements are seen in adult mammals with certain brain lesion-induced motor impairments. In this study we propose that synaptic learning mechanisms, in conjunction with appropriate movement strategies based on warm-up movements, can calibrate the HD system so that it functions effectively even in darkness. To examine the link between physical embodiment and neural control, and to determine that the system is robust to real-world phenomena, we implemented the synaptic mechanisms in a spiking neural network and tested it on a mobile robot platform. Results show that the combination of the synaptic learning mechanisms and warm-up movements are able to reliably calibrate the HD system so that it accurately tracks real-world head direction, and that calibration breaks down in systematic ways if certain movements are omitted. This work confirms that targeted, embodied behaviour can be used to calibrate neural systems, demonstrates that ‘grounding’ of modelled biological processes in the real world can reveal underlying functional principles (supporting the importance of robotics to biology), and proposes a functional role for stereotypical behaviours seen in infant mammals and those animals with certain motor deficits. We conjecture that these calibration principles may extend to the calibration of other neural systems involved in motion tracking and the representation of space, such as grid cells in entorhinal cortex. Public Library of Science 2011-10-04 /pmc/articles/PMC3186777/ /pubmed/21991332 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025687 Text en Stratton et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Stratton, Peter Milford, Michael Wyeth, Gordon Wiles, Janet Using Strategic Movement to Calibrate a Neural Compass: A Spiking Network for Tracking Head Direction in Rats and Robots |
title | Using Strategic Movement to Calibrate a Neural Compass: A Spiking Network for Tracking Head Direction in Rats and Robots |
title_full | Using Strategic Movement to Calibrate a Neural Compass: A Spiking Network for Tracking Head Direction in Rats and Robots |
title_fullStr | Using Strategic Movement to Calibrate a Neural Compass: A Spiking Network for Tracking Head Direction in Rats and Robots |
title_full_unstemmed | Using Strategic Movement to Calibrate a Neural Compass: A Spiking Network for Tracking Head Direction in Rats and Robots |
title_short | Using Strategic Movement to Calibrate a Neural Compass: A Spiking Network for Tracking Head Direction in Rats and Robots |
title_sort | using strategic movement to calibrate a neural compass: a spiking network for tracking head direction in rats and robots |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3186777/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21991332 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025687 |
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