Fourth International Symposium on Biology of Decision Making SBDM2014 Cooperation of S-R habit and cognitive learnings in goal-oriented navigation

The Stimulus-Response (S-R) theory and Tolman’s Cognitive Theory of behavior control both issued from behaviorism in the early XXth century still provide a relevant general framework to account for animal reward-based adaptive behavior. In this paper, we propose a new paradigm for representing and implementing both the cognitive strategy and the S-R habit strategy within a unitary coding frame. Based on a parallel learning of both strategies, the model explains how the fast learning cognitive strategy can supervise and accelerate the slow learning S-R habit strategy. This parallel representation is inspired by the cortico-basal functional loops [Alexander et. al., 1986] and the cooperation between the cognitive associative loop, including the dorso-medial striatum and the mPF; and the sensory-motor loop, associated to the sensory motor cortex in relation with the dorso-lateral striatum. The implementation of S-R habit strategy is different from a classical Q-learning and is based on the model of [Hirel et al., 2013], representing the functioning of the sensory-motor loop. This representation is based on a neuronal modelisation of the Q-learning algorithm. The states of the model are represented by the transitions. A transition is an association between two consecutive place-cells during the exploration of the environment, learned in the CA1-CA3 regions of the hippocampus. The cognitive strategy is based on a map representation of the environment namely the cognitive map [O’Keefe & Nadel, 1978]. Based on the association between learne