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The medial Reticular Formation (mRF): a neural substrate for action selection? An evaluation via evolutionary computation. Master's Thesis (ENS/EHESS/Paris 5)

The medial Reticular Formation (mRF) is located in the brainstem: it receives many sensory inputs and it can control motor actions through its projections on the spinal cord and cranial nerves. The mRF is phylogenetically one of the oldest neural structures of the brainstem, the latter being regarded as one of the oldest centers of the central nervous system. Subsequently it seems to be a low-level system for action selection. 

The first model of the mRF was proposed by Kilmer and McCulloch in 1969, who already proposed that the mRF could be a "mode selector". In 2005, Humphries et al. (2005) tested the efficiency of this model in the minimal survival task defined in Girard et al. (2003). It performed poorly, but another version of it that included artificially evolved weights performed quite honorably. As a result, Humphries proposed a second model of the mRF, based on neural network formalism and taking into account new anatomical data. Nevertheless, it showed poor performances in the minimal survival task and turns out not to be anatomically very plausible. 

In this Master's Thesis, we propose a new model of the mRF:

 * constrained by anatomical information about its structure,
 * constructed based on neural networks generated by artificial evolution,
 * assessed on tasks of action selection.


The model we obtain successfully manages the tasks of selection, indicating that the mRF can be used as an action selection system. We also demonstrate an anatomical property of the mRF, which coupled with the results of the paper Humphries et al. (2006) shows that it is very likely that the mRF network has a small-world structure. 

This project was funded by the ANR (ANR-09-EMER-005-01. ANR = French National Agency for Research) in the project EvoNeuro.