Fig 2. Architecture and functioning of the model: Components and information flow.

The architecture is formed by a planning component (representing input patterns, hidden causes of input patterns within an associative layer, expected events including actions, and goals), an exploration component selecting actions when planning is uncertain, and an arbitration component deciding when to plan, explore, or act. The figure also shows the timing of the processes taking place during a trial, with the first two left graphs showing the Planning (exploitation) and (possibly) Exploration phases and the right two graphs showing the Action execution and Learning phases. Blue arrows represent an example of information flow travelling stable connections during the Planning phase and red arrows represent information flows travelling connections that are updated during the Learning phase.