gecco2011_JonesSoltoggioSendhoffYao.pdf (1.44 MB)
Evolution of neural symmetry and its coupled alignment to body plan morphology
conference contribution
posted on 2015-03-18, 15:37 authored by Ben H. Jones, Andrea SoltoggioAndrea Soltoggio, Bernhard Sendhoff, Xin YaoBody morphology is thought to have heavily influenced the evolution of neural architecture. However, the extent of this interaction and its underlying principles are largely unclear. To help us elucidate these principles, we examine the artificial evolution of a hypothetical nervous system embedded in a fish-inspired animat. The aim is to observe the evolution of neural structures in relation to both body morphology and required motor primitives. Our investigations reveal that increasing the pressure to evolve a wider range of movements also results in higher levels of neural symmetry. We further examine how different body shapes affect the evolution of neural structure; we find that, in order to achieve optimal movements, the neural structure integrates and compensates for asymmetrical body morphology. Our study clearly indicates that different parts of the animat - specifically, nervous system and body plan - evolve in concert with and become highly functional with respect to the other parts. The autonomous emergence of morphological and neural computation in this model contributes to unveiling the surprisingly strong coupling of such systems in nature.
History
School
- Science
Department
- Computer Science
Published in
Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO'11Pages
235 - 242Citation
JONES, B.H. ... et al., 2011. Evolution of neural symmetry and its coupled alignment to body plan morphology. IN: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO'11, pp. 235 - 242Publisher
© ACMVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2011Notes
This is a conference paper.ISBN
9781450305570Publisher version
Language
- en