Regarding Compass Response Functions For Modeling Path Integration: Comment on 'Evolving a Neural Model of Insect Path Integration'

摘要

Recently, Haferlach, Wessnitzer, Mangan, and Webb (2007) reported on the production of a novel neural model of the animal behavior known as path integration, a navigation process requiring a compass and an odometer. Here, we comment on comparisons that their paper makes with our earlier work (Vickerstaff & Di Paolo, 2005) where we also evolved a neural model of path integration. The authors make prominent mention of the similarity of their compass sensors to the known properties of the polarization-sensitive (POL) neurons found in insects. They give the impression that their compass response function, expressed as a dot-product equation (Haferlach et al., 2007, p. 274, equation 1; see below), has a closer similarity to POL neurons than does the cosine function we employed for our earlier model. In fact, this is not the case.