Learning to Recall

From the infinite set of routes that you could drive to work, you have probably found a way that gets you there in a reasonable time, dealing with traffic conditions and running minimal risks. Humans are very good at learning such efficient sequences based on very little feedback, but it is unclear how the brain learns to solve such tasks. At CWI, in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN), we have developed a biologically realistic neural model that, like animals, can be trained to recall relevant past events and then to perform optimal action sequences, just by rewarding it for correct sequences of actions. The model explains neural activations found in the brains of animals trained on similar tasks.