Overcoming Dynamicity with Plasticity: Neuromodulation for Lifelike Systems

Abstract

Natural beings are often situated in dynamic and unpredictable environments, and have evolved to use mechanisms such as neuromodulation -- the ability to change behaviour via changes to synaptic activity in the brain -- to adapt their behaviour over time to survive. The ability to change behaviour in this way is referred to as behavioural plasticity'. In this extended abstract, we summarise the findings from an exploration of how plasticity can affect how artificial agents evolve when solving tasks of different complexity, and when evolving in dynamic and unpredictable environments.

BibTeX (Download)

@misc{Barnes2022OvercomingSystems,
title = {Overcoming Dynamicity with Plasticity: Neuromodulation for Lifelike Systems},
author = {Chloe M. Barnes and Anikó Ekárt and Kai Olav Ellefsen and Kyrre Glette and Peter R. Lewis and Jim Tørresen},
url = {https://www.organic-computing.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/LIFELIKE2022_Barnes-et-al_Neuromodulation.pdf},
year  = {2022},
date = {2022-07-20},
urldate = {2022-01-01},
abstract = {Natural beings are often situated in dynamic and unpredictable environments, and have evolved to use mechanisms such as neuromodulation -- the ability to change behaviour via changes to synaptic activity in the brain -- to adapt their behaviour over time to survive. The ability to change behaviour in this way is referred to as behavioural plasticity'. In this extended abstract, we summarise the findings from an exploration of how plasticity can affect how artificial agents evolve when solving tasks of different complexity, and when evolving in dynamic and unpredictable environments.},
howpublished = {LIFELIKE Systems Workshop, 2022},
keywords = {Agent-Based Systems, ANNs, Artificial Life, Behavioural Plasticity, Environmental Variability, Evolutionary Algorithms, Evolutionary Volatility, Neuroevolution, Neuromodulation, River Crossing},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {presentation}
}