Paul Verschure

Ismael T. Freire, Paul Verschure

Social learning, a cornerstone of cultural evolution, enables individuals to acquire knowledge by observing and imitating others. At the heart of its efficacy lies episodic memory, which encodes specific behavioral sequences to facilitate learning and decision-making. This study explores the interrelation between episodic memory and social learning in collective foraging. Using Sequential Episodic Control (SEC) agents capable of sharing complete behavioral sequences stored in episodic memory, we investigate how variations in the frequency and fidelity of social learning influence collaborative foraging performance. Furthermore, we analyze the effects of social learning on the content and distribution of episodic memories across the group. High-fidelity social learning is shown to consistently enhance resource collection efficiency and distribution, with benefits sustained across memory lengths. In contrast, low-fidelity learning fails to outperform nonsocial learning, spreading diverse but ineffective mnemonic patterns. Novel analyses using mnemonic metrics reveal that high-fidelity social learning also fosters mnemonic group alignment and equitable resource distribution, while low-fidelity conditions increase mnemonic diversity without translating to performance gains. Additionally, we identify an optimal range for episodic memory length in this task, beyond which performance plateaus. These findings underscore the critical effects of social learning on mnemonic group alignment and distribution and highlight the potential of neurocomputational models to probe the cognitive mechanisms driving cultural evolution.

Oscar Guerrero-Rosado, Paul Verschure

In the past decade, society has experienced notable growth in a variety of technological areas. However, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has not been embraced yet. Industry 4.0 imposes several challenges which include the necessity of new architectural models to tackle the uncertainty that open environments represent to cyber-physical systems (CPS). Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) recycling plants stand for one of such open environments. Here, CPSs must work harmoniously in a changing environment, interacting with similar and not so similar CPSs, and adaptively collaborating with human workers. In this paper, we support the Distributed Adaptive Control (DAC) theory as a suitable Cognitive Architecture for managing a recycling plant. Specifically, a recursive implementation of DAC (between both single-agent and large-scale levels) is proposed to meet the expected demands of the European Project HR-Recycler. Additionally, with the aim of having a realistic benchmark for future implementations of the recursive DAC, a micro-recycling plant prototype is presented.

Ismael T. Freire, Xerxes D. Arsiwalla, Jordi-Ysard Puigbò et al.

A major challenge in cognitive science and AI has been to understand how autonomous agents might acquire and predict behavioral and mental states of other agents in the course of complex social interactions. How does such an agent model the goals, beliefs, and actions of other agents it interacts with? What are the computational principles to model a Theory of Mind (ToM)? Deep learning approaches to address these questions fall short of a better understanding of the problem. In part, this is due to the black-box nature of deep networks, wherein computational mechanisms of ToM are not readily revealed. Here, we consider alternative hypotheses seeking to model how the brain might realize a ToM. In particular, we propose embodied and situated agent models based on distributed adaptive control theory to predict actions of other agents in five different game theoretic tasks (Harmony Game, Hawk-Dove, Stag-Hunt, Prisoner's Dilemma and Battle of the Exes). Our multi-layer control models implement top-down predictions from adaptive to reactive layers of control and bottom-up error feedback from reactive to adaptive layers. We test cooperative and competitive strategies among seven different agent models (cooperative, greedy, tit-for-tat, reinforcement-based, rational, predictive and other's-model agents). We show that, compared to pure reinforcement-based strategies, probabilistic learning agents modeled on rational, predictive and other's-model phenotypes perform better in game-theoretic metrics across tasks. Our autonomous multi-agent models capture systems-level processes underlying a ToM and highlight architectural principles of ToM from a control-theoretic perspective.

Ismael T. Freire, Clement Moulin-Frier, Marti Sanchez-Fibla et al.

What is the role of real-time control and learning in the formation of social conventions? To answer this question, we propose a computational model that matches human behavioral data in a social decision-making game that was analyzed both in discrete-time and continuous-time setups. Furthermore, unlike previous approaches, our model takes into account the role of sensorimotor control loops in embodied decision-making scenarios. For this purpose, we introduce the Control-based Reinforcement Learning (CRL) model. CRL is grounded in the Distributed Adaptive Control (DAC) theory of mind and brain, where low-level sensorimotor control is modulated through perceptual and behavioral learning in a layered structure. CRL follows these principles by implementing a feedback control loop handling the agent's reactive behaviors (pre-wired reflexes), along with an adaptive layer that uses reinforcement learning to maximize long-term reward. We test our model in a multi-agent game-theoretic task in which coordination must be achieved to find an optimal solution. We show that CRL is able to reach human-level performance on standard game-theoretic metrics such as efficiency in acquiring rewards and fairness in reward distribution.

Xerxes D. Arsiwalla, Ricard Sole, Clement Moulin-Frier et al.

We construct a complexity-based morphospace to study systems-level properties of conscious & intelligent systems. The axes of this space label 3 complexity types: autonomous, cognitive & social. Given recent proposals to synthesize consciousness, a generic complexity-based conceptualization provides a useful framework for identifying defining features of conscious & synthetic systems. Based on current clinical scales of consciousness that measure cognitive awareness and wakefulness, we take a perspective on how contemporary artificially intelligent machines & synthetically engineered life forms measure on these scales. It turns out that awareness & wakefulness can be associated to computational & autonomous complexity respectively. Subsequently, building on insights from cognitive robotics, we examine the function that consciousness serves, & argue the role of consciousness as an evolutionary game-theoretic strategy. This makes the case for a third type of complexity for describing consciousness: social complexity. Having identified these complexity types, allows for a representation of both, biological & synthetic systems in a common morphospace. A consequence of this classification is a taxonomy of possible conscious machines. We identify four types of consciousness, based on embodiment: (i) biological consciousness, (ii) synthetic consciousness, (iii) group consciousness (resulting from group interactions), & (iv) simulated consciousness (embodied by virtual agents within a simulated reality). This taxonomy helps in the investigation of comparative signatures of consciousness across domains, in order to highlight design principles necessary to engineer conscious machines. This is particularly relevant in the light of recent developments at the crossroads of cognitive neuroscience, biomedical engineering, artificial intelligence & biomimetics.

Riccardo Zucca, Xerxes D. Arsiwalla, Hoang Le et al.

We investigate scaling properties of human brain functional networks in the resting-state. Analyzing network degree distributions, we statistically test whether their tails scale as power-law or not. Initial studies, based on least-squares fitting, were shown to be inadequate for precise estimation of power-law distributions. Subsequently, methods based on maximum-likelihood estimators have been proposed and applied to address this question. Nevertheless, no clear consensus has emerged, mainly because results have shown substantial variability depending on the data-set used or its resolution. In this study, we work with high-resolution data (10K nodes) from the Human Connectome Project and take into account network weights. We test for the power-law, exponential, log-normal and generalized Pareto distributions. Our results show that the statistics generally do not support a power-law, but instead these degree distributions tend towards the thin-tail limit of the generalized Pareto model. This may have implications for the number of hubs in human brain functional networks.