Neuropsychological phenomena have been modelized mainly, by the mainstream approach, by attempt- ing to reproduce their neural substrate whereas sensory-motor contingencies have attracted less attention. In this work, we introduce a simulator based on the evolutionary robotics platform Evorobot* in order to setting up in silico neuropsychological tasks. Moreover, in this study we trained artificial embodied neurorobotic agents equipped with a pan/tilt camera, provided with different neural and motor capabili- ties, to solve a well-known neuropsychological test: the cancellation task in which an individual is asked to cancel target stimuli surrounded by distractors. Results showed that embodied agents provided with additional motor capabilities (a zooming/attentional actuator) outperformed simple pan/tilt agents, even those equipped with more complex neural controllers and that the zooming ability is exploited to cor- rectly categorising presented stimuli. We conclude that since the sole neural computational power cannot explain the (artificial) cognition which emerged throughout the adaptive process, such kind of modelling approach can be fruitful in neuropsychological modelling where the importance of having a body is often neglected.

Gigliotta, O., Bartolomeo, P., Miglino, O., Approaching neuropsychological tasks through adaptive neurorobots, <<CONNECTION SCIENCE>>, 2014; (N/A): 1-11. [doi:10.1080/09540091.2014.968094] [http://hdl.handle.net/10807/60144]

Approaching neuropsychological tasks through adaptive neurorobots

Bartolomeo, Paolo;
2014

Abstract

Neuropsychological phenomena have been modelized mainly, by the mainstream approach, by attempt- ing to reproduce their neural substrate whereas sensory-motor contingencies have attracted less attention. In this work, we introduce a simulator based on the evolutionary robotics platform Evorobot* in order to setting up in silico neuropsychological tasks. Moreover, in this study we trained artificial embodied neurorobotic agents equipped with a pan/tilt camera, provided with different neural and motor capabili- ties, to solve a well-known neuropsychological test: the cancellation task in which an individual is asked to cancel target stimuli surrounded by distractors. Results showed that embodied agents provided with additional motor capabilities (a zooming/attentional actuator) outperformed simple pan/tilt agents, even those equipped with more complex neural controllers and that the zooming ability is exploited to cor- rectly categorising presented stimuli. We conclude that since the sole neural computational power cannot explain the (artificial) cognition which emerged throughout the adaptive process, such kind of modelling approach can be fruitful in neuropsychological modelling where the importance of having a body is often neglected.
2014
Inglese
Gigliotta, O., Bartolomeo, P., Miglino, O., Approaching neuropsychological tasks through adaptive neurorobots, <<CONNECTION SCIENCE>>, 2014; (N/A): 1-11. [doi:10.1080/09540091.2014.968094] [http://hdl.handle.net/10807/60144]
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10807/60144
Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 12
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? 7
social impact