Neural Implementation of Motivated Behavior: Feeding in an Artificial Insect

Part of Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 2 (NIPS 1989)

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Authors

Randall Beer, Hillel Chiel

Abstract

Most complex behaviors appear to be governed by internal moti(cid:173) vational states or drives that modify an animal's responses to its environment. It is therefore of considerable interest to understand the neural basis of these motivational states. Drawing upon work on the neural basis of feeding in the marine mollusc Aplysia, we have developed a heterogeneous artificial neural network for con(cid:173) trolling the feeding behavior of a simulated insect. We demonstrate that feeding in this artificial insect shares many characteristics with the motivated behavior of natural animals.