Brain-Inspired Stigmergy Learning

Abstract: Stigmergy has proved its great superiority in terms of distributed control, robustness and adaptability, thus being regarded as an ideal solution for large-scale swarm control problems. Based on new discoveries on astrocytes in regulating synaptic transmission in the brain, this paper has mapped stigmergy mechanism into the interaction between synapses and investigated its characteristics and advantages. Particularly, we have divided the interaction between synapses which are not directly connected into three phases and proposed a stigmergic learning model. In this model, the state change of a stigmergy 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 stigmergy agents. Inspired by the morphological and functional changes in astrocytes during environmental enrichment, it is likely that the regulation of distance between stigmergy agents plays a critical role in the stigmergy learning process. Simulation results have verified its importance and indicated that the well-regulated distance between stigmergy agents can help to obtain stigmergy learning gain.