Abstract
The ontogenetic process that forms the structure of biological brains is believed to be ruled primarily by optimizing principles of resource allocation and constraint satisfaction for resources such as metabolic energy, wiring length, cranial volume, etc. These processes lead to networks that have interesting macroscopic structures, such as small-world and scale-free organization. However, open questions remain about the importance of these structures in cognitive performance, and how information processing constraints might provide requirements that dictate the types of macro structures observed. Constraints on the physical and metabolic needs of biological brains must be balanced with information processing constraints. It is therefore plausible that observed structures of biological brains are the result of both physical and information processing needs. In this paper we show that small-world structure can evolve under combined physical and functional constraints for a simulated evolution of a neuronal controller for an embodied agent in a navigational task.
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Harter, D. (2012). Evolution of Small-World Properties in Embodied Networks. In: Zhang, H., Hussain, A., Liu, D., Wang, Z. (eds) Advances in Brain Inspired Cognitive Systems. BICS 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7366. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31561-9_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31561-9_11
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