A ‘rat-brained’ scheme for decisions

Rat-powered robotics are taking central stage at UC Irvine — not Disneyland — because of a robot powered by rodent brain impulses that is teaching researchers about uncertainty in the face of change.

The robot is being used in a $1.6-million joint study between UCI and UC San Diego; researchers hope to learn about the brain’s role in decision making and attention at the neuron level.

“Little is known about the areas of the brain involved in making decisions when faced with uncertainty,” Jeffrey Krichmar, a UCI cognitive scientist and one of the study’s lead researchers, said in a release.

Krichmar is working with CARL-1, named for the Cognitive Anteater Robotics Laboratory on campus, which has a nervous system controlled by a realistic model of the human brain. His work has been featured in the September issue of IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine.

In San Diego, researchers Andrea Chiba, Douglas Nitz and Angela Yu are developing data by testing rodents’ decision-making abilities, and then digitally recording their brain responses during the task.

The brain impulses are programmed into CARL-1’s “brain,” and he is charged with replicating their behavior.

“We know the areas of the brain supposedly involved in predicting and adapting to uncertainty, but getting a complete picture of what happens in a real human brain isn’t technically feasible,” Krichmar said. “As the robot navigates the same challenging situations the rats faced, though, we’ll be able to actually see the areas of the simulated human brain being utilized to make decisions and the physical changes taking place.”