Figure 1. Model Architecture.

Our animat (artificial animal) “lives” on a circle and performs the following task. We place the animat randomly to one position on the circle. The animat then chooses a direction, the decision, . At each position there is one “correct” direction . Choices close to the correct direction receive some reward, according to a Gaussian reward function. This processes (the setting of the animat at a location, selection of a decision, receiving a reward and updating of the feed-forward weights) constitutes a single trial. After completion of a trial the animat is placed randomly at a new position and the task is repeated. The task will be fully learned if the animat chooses the correct direction at each position on the circle. A: Shows a schematic overview of our two layer model architecture consisting of Place Cells (red) and Action Cells (blue). Place Cells (modelled as Poisson neurons) are connected to Action Cells (Integrate-and-Fire neurons) using an all-to-all feed forward network (not all connections are shown). In addition Action Cells may be interconnected via lateral Mexican hat-type connections (not all connections are shown). The layer of Place Cells is arranged in a ring like topology with each neuron having a preferred angle, and firing with maximum probability if the location of the animat happens to coincide with this preferred angle. In the example shown the animat is placed at the location that corresponds to the preferred direction of neuron index . The top layer, also arranged in a ring topology, codes for the location the animat will choose. B: Shows the output spike train of the Action Cells demonstrating a bump formation around neuron () with a resulting decision angle matching the preferred angle of . In this example the target angle , and therefore the animat has made the correct decision. C: Shows the spike train of the input layer (Place Cells) when the animat is placed at the location encoded by neuron .