Evolutionary robots for the investigation of rat behavior in the open field test

Abstract

In this project, computational models for the investigation of the behavior of rats in the open field test will be studied. The open field test is used to measure levels of anxiety in rodents. Using the open field test, one can investigate behavioral models and the effect of drugs, such as drugs for anxiety control. In [COSTA, 2015], a computational agent based on a recurrent neural networks optimized by genetic algorithms was used to investigate the behavior of rats in the elevated plus maze. This project has as main objective the development of a computational model based on the model described in [COSTA, 2015], but considering the open field test instead of the elevated plus maze. In addition, evolutionary robots will be used. Evolutionary robots were not used in [COSTA, 2015]. The trajectory of the robot will be stored and compared with trajectories of rats obtained in experiments already performed. It should be investigated if the robot will present behavior patterns similar to those of the rats. (AU)