Mesoscopic level neurodynamics study the collective dynamical behavior of neural populations. Such models are becoming increasingly important in understanding large-scale brain processes. Brains exhibit aperiodic oscillations with a much more rich dynamical behavior than fixed-point and limitcycle approximation allow. Here we present a discretized model inspired by Freeman’s K-set mesoscopic level population model. We show that this version is capable of replicating the important principles of aperiodic/chaotic neurodynamics while being fast enough for use in real-time autonomous agent applications. This simplification of the K model provides many advantages not only in terms of efficiency but in simplicity and its ability to be analyzed in terms of its dynamical properties. We study the discrete version using a multi-layer, highly recurrent model of the neural architecture of perceptual brain areas. We use this architecture to develop example action selection mechanisms in an autonomous agent.

Biological organisms display an amazing ability during their ontogenetic development to adaptively develop solutions to the various problems of survival that their environments present to them. Dynamical and embodied models of cognition (Clark, 1997; Edelman & Tononi, 2000; Franklin, 1995; Freeman, 1999a, 1999b; Freeman & Kozma, 2000; Freeman, Kozma, & Werbos, 2000; Hendriks-Jansen, 1996; Kelso, 1995; Kozma & Freeman, 2001; Port & van Gelder, 1995; Skarda & Freeman, 1987; Thelen & Smith, 1994) are beginning to offer new insights into how the numerous, heterogeneous elements of neural structures may self-organize during the development of the organism in order to effectively form adaptive categories and increasingly sophisticated skills, strategies and goals. In this paper we present models of ontogenetic development built on neurologically inspired, bottom-up, dynamic approaches to embodied category formation such as those done by Freeman (1975, 1999b), Freeman and Kozma (2000), Kozma and Freeman (2001), Verschure (1998) and Edelman (1987, 1989). We believe that building on such mechanisms from an embodied dynamical perspective will produce autonomous agents that display greatly increased flexibility in their behavior. Such models will represent a better understanding of how the brains of biological organisms not only form perceptual categories of their environments during development, but also develop effective patterns of behavior through the dynamic self-organization of neurological patterns of activity.

Biological brains are capable of adaptive behavior to sustain performance on tasks in the face of increasingly difficult constraints. Precisely how this performance is achieved, especially under demanding real-time constraint, is an important problem in the study of cognition. Brains are embedded in and constrained by their environments. The brain/environment pair together form a coupled dynamical system that mutually influence and react to one another. We can begin to understand how such performance is achieved by studying real behavior on constrained tasks, and modeling this behavior. In this article we present a task with varying conditions of time and resource constraint. We present data collected on humans performing the task under such constraint. We compare models that we have developed of this behavior generation to human performance. Finally we speculate on some of the mechanisms of chaotic neurodynamics that may be involved in the flexible generation of behavior under constraint.