Morphological Computation: Synergy of Body and Brain

There are numerous examples that show how the exploitation of the body’s physical properties can lift the burden of the brain. Examples include grasping, swimming, locomotion, and motion detection. The term Morphological Computation was originally coined to describe processes in the body that would...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Keyan Ghazi-Zahedi, Carlotta Langer, Nihat Ay
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2017-08-01
Series:Entropy
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/19/9/456
Description
Summary:There are numerous examples that show how the exploitation of the body’s physical properties can lift the burden of the brain. Examples include grasping, swimming, locomotion, and motion detection. The term Morphological Computation was originally coined to describe processes in the body that would otherwise have to be conducted by the brain. In this paper, we argue for a synergistic perspective, and by that we mean that Morphological Computation is a process which requires a close interaction of body and brain. Based on a model of the sensorimotor loop, we study a new measure of synergistic information and show that it is more reliable in cases in which there is no synergistic information, compared to previous results. Furthermore, we discuss an algorithm that allows the calculation of the measure in non-trivial (non-binary) systems.
ISSN:1099-4300