UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
		COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

			     presents


	  "An Artificial Life Perspective on Olfactory Systems"

			   Nicolas Oros
	   (Centre for Computer Science & Informatics Research,
		     University of Hertfordshire)


		       18 March 2009 (Wednesday)

			 Lecture Theatre E350
		   Hatfield, College Lane Campus
			      3 - 4 pm

	    Coffee/tea and biscuits will be available.

		   Everyone is Welcome to Attend



Abstract:

I am interested in the evolution of cognitive capabilities in animals,
especially in the evolution of olfactory systems. How such systems work
is not well understood, compared to other cognitive systems, but there
are some hypotheses. I believe the bottom-up approach of Artificial
Life can be useful to help neuro-scientists in order to understand such
complex systems.  My goal is to evolve neural controllers for agents 
that need to distinguish different odours and study the similarities 
(if any) between these controllers and real olfactory systems. As in 
many artificial life systems, my model uses abstractions of different
features of this world such as: a continuous environment (composed also 
of chemicals...odours), agents that have a particular embodiment and a
genome which is executed during development to generate a spiking
neural controller, and neural noise.  I created a developmental model 
that generates spiking neural controllers for simulated agents. My 
model can create neural controllers that can encode information as 
spatio-temporal patterns. As I am interested in how olfactory systems 
process information, I am studying the evolution of simple neural 
networks for agents that have to react to different chemicals.
I am also studying how these evolved controllers encode simulated
odours (elemental and mixtures), possibly using different neural 
coding strategies.
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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/~nehaniv/colloq