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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...

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Autores principales: Stratton, Peter, Milford, Michael, Wyeth, Gordon, Wiles, Janet
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2011
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.
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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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