Abstract
This paper introduces an active inference formulation of planning and navigation. It illustrates how the exploitation–exploration dilemma is dissolved by acting to minimise uncertainty (i.e. expected surprise or free energy). We use simulations of a maze problem to illustrate how agents can solve quite complicated problems using context sensitive prior preferences to form subgoals. Our focus is on how epistemic behaviour—driven by novelty and the imperative to reduce uncertainty about the world—contextualises pragmatic or goal-directed behaviour. Using simulations, we illustrate the underlying process theory with synthetic behavioural and electrophysiological responses during exploration of a maze and subsequent navigation to a target location. An interesting phenomenon that emerged from the simulations was a putative distinction between ‘place cells’—that fire when a subgoal is reached—and ‘path cells’—that fire until a subgoal is reached.
Highlights
The ability to navigate an uncertain world is clearly a central aspect of most behaviour
We describe an active inference scheme based on Markov decision processes that accomplishes this task
The degree to which familiarity supported task performance was assessed by recording the path taken to the target when starting from the initial location. These results show that the subject was able to navigate to the goal, without making any mistakes, after about 16 s of exploration. (No mistakes were made after 16 s in this example.) Note that the time taken to reach the target is paradoxically the shortest when the maze is unfamiliar, because the subject took shortcuts along illegal paths
Summary
The ability to navigate an uncertain world is clearly a central aspect of most behaviour This ability rests on the optimal integration of knowledge about the world and the goals that we are currently pursuing (Hauskrecht 2000; Johnson et al 2007; Pastalkova et al 2008; Hassabis and Maguire 2009; Humphries and Prescott 2010; Karaman and Frazzoli 2011; Buzsaki and Moser 2013; Pfeiffer and Foster 2013).
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