Neural Mechanisms of Nutritional Homeostasis

简单和复杂的动物，包括人类，总是面临着在使用不完整信息的情况下做出明智决定的需要。神经系统是如何组织起来做到这一点的一直是一个主要的谜题。然而，我们知道动物用自己的情感状态作为信息来做决定，在它们的计算中，它们把自己的内部状态与感觉和经验结合起来，从而做出决定。该结果代表了从可能的利益、资源损失和可能的自我损害方面对行为决策进行的成本效益分析。本文拟以体型、行为和神经系统简单的捕食动物为研究对象，研究捕食行为决策中成本效益分析的神经基础。本研究概述了三个目标：1)发现饱足和猎物回避学习如何影响神经系统对攻击或回避的决策机制；2)确定血清素在决策机制中的作用，这是一个关键的偏倚因素；3)在神经网络的计算模型中总结和测试结果。预期的结果对于能够在嘈杂环境中做出最小可能错误决策的自主机器人的发展以及人工智能的发展具有重要意义，因为基于动机的过程可能提供与目标相关的活动的关键调节，就像在真实的智能系统中一样。研究结果还与厌食症和肥胖症中体重控制的健康问题直接相关，因为它们接近了调节营养稳态过程的组织。

Simple and complex animals, including humans, are always faced with the need to decide wisely upon actions using incomplete information. How the nervous system is organized to do this has been a major puzzle. However, we know that animals make most decisions using their own affective state as information, and that in their computations they integrate their own internal state with sensation and experience to arrive at decisions. The result represents a cost-benefit analysis of a behavioral decision in terms of probable benefit, resource loss and possible self-damage. This proposal describes plans to study the neural basis of cost-benefit analysis in decision-making in foraging behavior using a model predator species with simple body form, behavior and nervous system. Three goals are outlined: 1) to find how satiation and prey-avoidance learning influence decision-making mechanisms in the nervous system for attack or avoidance; 2) to determine the role of serotonin, a critical biasing factor, in the mechanisms of decision-making; and 3) to summarize and test the results in a computational model of the neural networks. The expected results are significant to the development of autonomous robots capable of making least-probable-error decisions in a noisy environment, and to the evolution of artificial intelligence for which motivation-based processes may provide the critical regulation of goal related activity, just as in real intelligence systems. The results also relate directly to health issues of weight-control in anorexia and obesity, in that they approach the organization of processes regulating nutritional homeostasis.