RI: Large: Collaborative Research: Understanding Uncertainty in Rats and Robots

人类、老鼠和其他脊椎动物依靠先进的神经系统，在处理世界的不确定性方面远优于人工系统。因此，一个行为受神经生物学启发系统引导的机器，可能会表现出通常归因于生物有机体的灵活自主行为。生物有机体有能力对不断变化的世界做出快速反应。因为这种适应性对生存至关重要，所以所有脊椎动物都有皮层下结构，其中包括神经调节系统，以应对环境的不确定性和变化。注意力受神经调节的影响，在动物对这些变化的反应能力中起着重要作用。不同的神经调节系统被认为在注意力中起着重要而独特的作用。一种将啮齿动物实验与具有模拟神经系统的机器人进行比较的合作方法将检验这些注意力系统。这些实验将有助于更好地理解动物如何应对环境中的不确定性，并将有助于设计出具有灵活和复杂行为能力的机器人。这项工作有可能成为范式转换技术，在许多实际应用中找到自己的方式。本研究将以脊椎动物神经调节系统及其对注意力的影响为基础，采用跨学科的方法构建机器人系统，并在与大鼠相似的实验条件下进行测试，然后进行更实际的应用。这种方法将计算建模和机器人技术与啮齿动物行为和电生理实验相结合，将使人们更好地理解大脑区域如何分配注意力资源，并使生物体对重要事件和物体做出快速反应。这些神经调节系统中的两个，胆碱能和去甲肾上腺素能，被认为在注意力中起着重要而独特的作用。预期的不确定性，即已知的环境中预测关系的不可靠程度，驱动胆碱能系统内的活动。意想不到的不确定性，环境中违背先前预期的巨大变化，驱动去肾上腺素能系统内的活动。这些系统调节大脑区域的活动，以适当地将注意力分配到环境中的刺激上，这对于充分的学习发生和保持流体行为是必要的。这些知识将用于构建一个强大的智能机器人系统，其适应变化的能力，并在嘈杂、复杂的环境中有效地行动，将与生物系统相媲美。

Humans, rats and other vertebrates, relying on their advanced nervous systems, are far superior at dealing with the uncertainties of the world than are artificial systems. Thus, a machine, whose behavior is guided by a neurobiologically inspired system, might demonstrate the flexible, autonomous behavior normally attributed to biological organisms. Biological organisms have the ability to respond quickly to an ever-changing world. Because this adaptability is so critical for survival, all vertebrates have sub-cortical structures, which comprise the neuromodulatory systems, to handle uncertainty and change in the environment. Attention, which is influenced by neuromodulation, plays a significant role in animal's ability to respond to such changes. Different neuromodulatory systems are thought to play important and distinct roles in attention. A collaborative approach, which compares rodent experiments with robots having simulated nervous systems, will examine these attentional systems. These experiments will lead to a better understanding of how animals cope with uncertainty in the environment, and will lead to the design of a robot capable of flexible and complex behavior. This work has the potential of being paradigm-shifting technology that could find its way in many practical applications.In an interdisciplinary approach, a robotic system, whose design is based on the vertebrate neuromodulatory system and its effect on attention, will be constructed and tested under similar experimental conditions to the rat, and then in a more practical application. This approach, which combines computational modeling and robotics with rodent behavioral and electrophysiological experiments, will lead to a better understanding of how areas of the brain allocate attentional resources and cause the organism to respond rapidly to essential events and objects. Two of these neuromodulatory systems, the cholinergic and noradrenergic, are thought to play important and distinct roles in attention. Expected uncertainty, the known degree of unreliability of predictive relationships in the environment, drives activity within the cholinergic system. Unexpected uncertainty, large changes in the environment that violate prior expectations, drives activity within the noradrenergic system. These systems modulate activity in brain areas to properly allocate the attention to stimuli in the environment necessary for adequate learning to occur and fluid behavior to be maintained. This knowledge will be used to construct a robust, intelligent robotic system whose capability to adapt to change, and behave effectively in a noisy, complex environment will rival that of a biological system.