A New Research Program: Evolutionary Neurodynamics
summary
Hypothesis: the brain contains replicators in the brain that undergo selection during thinking and sleep, enabling open‑ended search. Models show three candidate substrates: copied connectivity patterns via spike‑time‑dependent plasticity and causal inference; overlapping activated pathways as genotypes (mathematically a two‑locus, two‑allele system); and bistable activity copied like evolution strategies. Ongoing tests include microelectrode rat cultures seeded with patterns, a Nao robot that evolves bounce behavior using a fixed objective (maximize z‑accelerometer derivative over ~6 hours), and a HIF‑128 task using a denoising autoencoder to learn proposal structure. Evidence includes V1 map copying and cortical map plasticity.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:43A Hypothesis: Evolutionary Neurodynamics
- 3:50JMS's formulation of natural selection
- 4:29What is natural selection? Price vs. JMS
- 7:13Bayes and selection (e.g. Harper, 2010)
- 8:20Test 1: Model and find neural replicators
- 11:52Three Rules
- 17:12Two Locus Two Allele Model of Path Evolution
- 22:14Machine Learning of Hidden Causes of Fitness Landscapes
- 24:55Cortical Map Plasticity may be Darwinian
- 36:25Fluid Construction Grammar with replicating constructs (with Luc Steels)
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