Acquisition of the Head-Centered Peri-Personal Spatial Representation Found in VIP Neuron

Abstract

Both body and visuo-spatial representations are supposed to be gradually acquired during the developmental process as described in cognitive and brain sciences. A typical example is face representation in a neuron (found in the ventral intraparietal (VIP) area) of which the function is not only to code for the location of visual stimuli in the head-centered reference frame, but also to connect visual sensation with tactile sensation. This paper presents a model that enables a robot to acquire such representation. The proprioception of arm posture is utilized as reference data through the ldquohand regard behavior,rdquo that is, the robot moves its hand in front of its face, and the self-organizing map (SOM) and Hebbian learning methods are applied. The simulation results are shown and discussions on the limitation of the current model and future issues are given.