Dynamical basis of intentions and expectations in the feeding network of Aplysia.

摘要

We do not just passively react to the outside world, rather our behavior is strongly influenced by such psychological states as intentions and expectations. On what basis do animals expect certain stimuli or intend to generate certain behaviors? How do these expectations and intentions arise in the nervous system? The answers to these questions are currently unclear.; Presumably much like other aspects of animal behavior, intentions and expectations that influence the way in which animals respond to stimuli coming from the environment have evolved because they make animals behave more adaptively. Viewed from this neuroethological perspective intentions and expectations represent a prediction of what is likely to come next based on the salient features of the environment and on the immediately preceding experiences. This raises the possibility that intentions and expectations may be mediated by dynamical reconfiguration of the nervous system that links past and future behaviors.; Here, I have studied the properties of the neuronal network that mediates a set of feeding responses in a sea hare Aplysia californica and found that the motor output produced by this system is not dictated by the input stimulus, but rather by the state of the network at the moment of stimulation. The slow dynamics of this network state extrapolate from the previous experience and thus form a prediction, intention or an expectation. The relative simplicity of the preparation allowed me to trace some aspects of these dynamical properties to the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms.