A novel plasticity rule can explain the development of sensorimotor intelligence

TL;DR

This paper introduces differential extrinsic plasticity (DEP), a biologically plausible synaptic rule that enables autonomous development of sensorimotor intelligence in robots without predefined goals.

Contribution

It proposes a novel synaptic plasticity rule that explains how purposeful behavior can emerge from self-organizing neural mechanisms without higher-level constructs.

Findings

Robots develop purposeful, adaptive behaviors using DEP without explicit goals.

The DEP rule relies on spontaneous symmetry breaking from brain-body-environment interactions.

Results suggest DEP could be a fundamental mechanism in natural evolution of intelligence.

Abstract

Grounding autonomous behavior in the nervous system is a fundamental challenge for neuroscience. In particular, the self-organized behavioral development provides more questions than answers. Are there special functional units for curiosity, motivation, and creativity? This paper argues that these features can be grounded in synaptic plasticity itself, without requiring any higher level constructs. We propose differential extrinsic plasticity (DEP) as a new synaptic rule for self-learning systems and apply it to a number of complex robotic systems as a test case. Without specifying any purpose or goal, seemingly purposeful and adaptive behavior is developed, displaying a certain level of sensorimotor intelligence. These surprising results require no system specific modifications of the DEP rule but arise rather from the underlying mechanism of spontaneous symmetry breaking due to the tight brain-body-environment coupling. The new synaptic rule is biologically plausible and it would be an interesting target for a neurobiolocal investigation. We also argue that this neuronal mechanism may have been a catalyst in natural evolution.