7,354 research outputs found
Talking Nets: A Multi-Agent Connectionist Approach to Communication and Trust between Individuals
A multi-agent connectionist model is proposed that consists of a collection of individual recurrent networks that communicate with each other, and as such is a network of networks. The individual recurrent networks simulate the process of information uptake, integration and memorization within individual agents, while the communication of beliefs and opinions between agents is propagated along connections between the individual networks. A crucial aspect in belief updating based on information from other agents is the trust in the information provided. In the model, trust is determined by the consistency with the receiving agents’ existing beliefs, and results in changes of the connections between individual networks, called trust weights. Thus activation spreading and weight change between individual networks is analogous to standard connectionist processes, although trust weights take a specific function. Specifically, they lead to a selective propagation and thus filtering out of less reliable information, and they implement Grice’s (1975) maxims of quality and quantity in communication. The unique contribution of communicative mechanisms beyond intra-personal processing of individual networks was explored in simulations of key phenomena involving persuasive communication and polarization, lexical acquisition, spreading of stereotypes and rumors, and a lack of sharing unique information in group decisions
Discovering Functional Communities in Dynamical Networks
Many networks are important because they are substrates for dynamical
systems, and their pattern of functional connectivity can itself be dynamic --
they can functionally reorganize, even if their underlying anatomical structure
remains fixed. However, the recent rapid progress in discovering the community
structure of networks has overwhelmingly focused on that constant anatomical
connectivity. In this paper, we lay out the problem of discovering_functional
communities_, and describe an approach to doing so. This method combines recent
work on measuring information sharing across stochastic networks with an
existing and successful community-discovery algorithm for weighted networks. We
illustrate it with an application to a large biophysical model of the
transition from beta to gamma rhythms in the hippocampus.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, Springer "Lecture Notes in Computer Science"
style. Forthcoming in the proceedings of the workshop "Statistical Network
Analysis: Models, Issues and New Directions", at ICML 2006. Version 2: small
clarifications, typo corrections, added referenc
Psychophysical identity and free energy
An approach to implementing variational Bayesian inference in biological
systems is considered, under which the thermodynamic free energy of a system
directly encodes its variational free energy. In the case of the brain, this
assumption places constraints on the neuronal encoding of generative and
recognition densities, in particular requiring a stochastic population code.
The resulting relationship between thermodynamic and variational free energies
is prefigured in mind-brain identity theses in philosophy and in the Gestalt
hypothesis of psychophysical isomorphism.Comment: 22 pages; published as a research article on 8/5/2020 in Journal of
the Royal Society Interfac
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