Emotions, diffusive emotional control and the motivational problem for autonomous cognitive systems

摘要

All self-active living beings need to solve the motivational problem: Thequestion what to do at any moment of their live. For humans and non-humananimals at least two distinct layers of motivational drives are known, theprimary needs for survival and the emotional drives leading to a wide range ofsophisticated strategies, such as explorative learning and socializing. Part ofthe emotional layer of drives has universal facets, being beneficial in anextended range of environmental settings. Emotions are triggered in the brainby the release of neuromodulators, which are, at the same time, the agents formeta-learning. This intrinsic relation between emotions, meta-learning anduniversal action strategies suggests a central importance for emotional controlfor the design of artificial intelligences and synthetic cognitive systems. Animplementation of this concept is proposed in terms of a dense and homogeneousassociative network (dHan).