A Cognitive Model Based on Neuromodulated Plasticity

Figure 4

The structure of core network in different phases of acquisition experiment. and , respectively, represent the synaptic weights between the neurons in working memory and action module. At the beginning of the experiment, there is no connection between and , suggesting that the dog will not salivate when it hears the bell sound alone. Thus, is 0. Then, it gradually increases, indicating a synaptic connection between and appears. As it is not big enough to trigger off salivation, the synaptic connection is represented by dash line instead of solid one in (b). At the end of the experiment, has increased a lot, so the connective line between two neurons becomes full in (c). During the whole process, increases too according to the learning mechanism. However, since the change of is not the highlight of the experiment, it is ignored in figure.

(a) At the beginning

(b) During experiment

(c) In the end