Deep Intrinsic Surprise-Regularized Control (DISRC): A Biologically Inspired Mechanism for Efficient Deep Q-Learning in Sparse Environments

TL;DR

DISRC enhances deep Q-learning in sparse environments by dynamically scaling updates based on a surprise signal, leading to faster and more stable learning compared to standard methods.

Contribution

This paper introduces DISRC, a biologically inspired mechanism that modulates Q-learning updates using a surprise measure, improving efficiency and stability in sparse-reward settings.

Findings

DISRC reaches successful episodes 33% faster than baseline.

DISRC achieves higher final rewards and AUC in tested environments.

DISRC demonstrates more consistent and stable learning performance.

Abstract

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has driven major advances in autonomous control. Still, standard Deep Q-Network (DQN) agents tend to rely on fixed learning rates and uniform update scaling, even as updates are modulated by temporal-difference (TD) error. This rigidity destabilizes convergence, especially in sparse-reward settings where feedback is infrequent. We introduce Deep Intrinsic Surprise-Regularized Control (DISRC), a biologically inspired augmentation to DQN that dynamically scales Q-updates based on latent-space surprise. DISRC encodes states via a LayerNorm-based encoder and computes a deviation-based surprise score relative to a moving latent setpoint. Each update is then scaled in proportion to both TD error and surprise intensity, promoting plasticity during early exploration and stability as familiarity increases. We evaluate DISRC on two sparse-reward MiniGrid environments, which included MiniGrid-DoorKey-8x8 and MiniGrid-LavaCrossingS9N1, under identical settings as a vanilla DQN baseline. In DoorKey, DISRC reached the first successful episode (reward > 0.8) 33% faster than the vanilla DQN baseline (79 vs. 118 episodes), with lower reward standard deviation (0.25 vs. 0.34) and higher reward area under the curve (AUC: 596.42 vs. 534.90). These metrics reflect faster, more consistent learning - critical for sparse, delayed reward settings. In LavaCrossing, DISRC achieved a higher final reward (0.95 vs. 0.93) and the highest AUC of all agents (957.04), though it converged more gradually. These preliminary results establish DISRC as a novel mechanism for regulating learning intensity in off-policy agents, improving both efficiency and stability in sparse-reward domains. By treating surprise as an intrinsic learning signal, DISRC enables agents to modulate updates based on expectation violations, enhancing decision quality when conventional value-based methods fall short.