The Minimal Complexity of Adapting Agents Increases with Fitness
- Creators
- Joshi, Nikhil J.
- Tononi, Giulio
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Koch, Christof
Abstract
What is the relationship between the complexity and the fitness of evolved organisms, whether natural or artificial? It has been asserted, primarily based on empirical data, that the complexity of plants and animals increases as their fitness within a particular environment increases via evolution by natural selection. We simulate the evolution of the brains of simple organisms living in a planar maze that they have to traverse as rapidly as possible. Their connectome evolves over 10,000s of generations. We evaluate their circuit complexity, using four information-theoretical measures, including one that emphasizes the extent to which any network is an irreducible entity. We find that their minimal complexity increases with their fitness.
Additional Information
© 2013 Joshi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Received September 14, 2012; Accepted May 3, 2013; Published July 11, 2013. Funding: This work was funded in part by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and by the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation. Neither played a role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. We would like to thank Chris Adami, Jeffrey Edlund and Nicolas Chaumont for developing the evolutionary framework, Virgil Griffith for stimulating discussions, and Samruddhi Ghaisas-Joshi for help with the English editing. Author Contributions: Conceived and designed the experiments: NJJ GT CK. Performed the experiments: NJJ. Analyzed the data: NJJ CK. Contributed reagents/ materials/analysis tools: NJJ. Wrote the paper: NJJ CK.Attached Files
Published - journal.pcbi.1003111.pdf
Supplemental Material - MovieS1.flv
Supplemental Material - journal.pcbi.1003111.s002.FLV
Supplemental Material - journal.pcbi.1003111.s003.FLV
Files
Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC3708884
- Eprint ID
- 41206
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20130910-110241609
- Paul G. Allen Family Foundation
- G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation
- Created
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2013-09-13Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field