Brain-inspired stigmergy learning

Abstract

Originating from entomology, stigmergy has provided an effective framework for swarm collaboration. Based on new discoveries on astrocytes in regulating synaptic transmission in the brain, this paper has mapped stigmergy mechanism into the interaction mediated by the propagation of calcium waves in astrocytes between synapses and investigated its characteristics and advantages. Particularly, we have divided the short-range interaction between synapses that are not directly connected by neurons into three phases and proposed a stigmergic learning model. In this model, the state change of an agent will expand its influence to affect the states of others. The strength of the interaction is determined by the level of neural activity as well as the distance between the agents. Inspired by these findings, we propose a model to help solve task assignment and coordination problems. The simulation results have verified the effectiveness of the proposed model.