Publications related to Computational models of intrinsic motivation for curiosity and creativity

Seeking the new, learning from the unexpected: Computational models of surprise and novelty in the brain

Human babies have a natural desire to interact with new toys and objects, through which they learn how the world around them works, e.g., that glass shatters when dropped, but a rubber ball does not. When their predictions are proven incorrect, such as whe ...

EPFL2024

Computational models of episodic-like memory in food-caching birds

Wulfram Gerstner, Johanni Michael Brea

How the 'what', 'where', and 'when' of past experiences are stored in episodic memories and retrieved for suitable decisions remains unclear. In an effort to address these questions, the authors present computational models of neural networks that behave l ...

Nature Portfolio2023

A Research-Practice Partnership to Introduce Computer Science in Secondary School: Lessons from a Pilot Program

Francesco Mondada, Helena Kovacs, Jean-Philippe Pellet, Jessica Elke Dehler Zufferey, Barbara Bruno, Laila Abdelsalam El-Hamamsy

Context: Introducing Computer Science (CS) into formal education can be challenging, notably when considering the numerous stakeholders involved which include the students, teachers, schools, and policy makers. We believe these perspectives should be con ...

2023

The iReCheck project: using tablets and robots for personalised handwriting practice

Pierre Dillenbourg, Chenyang Wang, Barbara Bruno, Daniel Carnieto Tozadore, David Cohen

Handwriting is an important skill in children development as well as in education that take years to be mastered. While keyboards and similar technological devices increasingly become more popular, new tools and engaging approaches are also required to kee ...

Association for Computing Machinery2023

Engram cell connectivity as a mechanism for information encoding and memory function

Maurizio Ferdinando Pezzoli

Information derived from experiences is incorporated into the brain as changes to ensembles of cells, termed engram cells, which allow memory storage and recall. The mechanism by which those changes hold specific information is unclear. Here, we test the h ...

Cell Press2023

An instance-based learning approach for evaluating the perception of ride-hailing waiting time variability

Michel Bierlaire, Nejc Gerzinic

Understanding user’s perception of service variability is essential to discern their overall perception of any type of (transport) service. We study the perception of waiting time variability for ride-hailing services. We carried out a stated preference su ...

2023

A theory of memory consolidation and synaptic pruning in cortical circuits

Georgios Iatropoulos

Over the course of a lifetime, the human brain acquires an astonishing amount of semantic knowledge and autobiographical memories, often with an imprinting strong enough to allow detailed information to be recalled many years after the initial learning exp ...

EPFL2023

Plasticity of sensory representations in the posterior insular cortex during fear learning

Denys Osypenko

Aversively-motivated associative learning allows animals to avoid harm and thus ensures survival. Aversive learning can be studied by the fear learning paradigm, in which an innocuous sensory stimulus like a tone (conditioned stimulus, CS), acquires a nega ...

EPFL2023

Hardware-Software co-design Methodologies for Edge AI Optimization

Flavio Ponzina

ML-based edge devices may face memory and computational errors that affect applications' reliability and performance. These errors can be the result of particular working conditions (e.g., radiation areas in physical experiments or avionics) or could be th ...

EPFL2023

Brain signals of a Surprise-Actor-Critic model: Evidence for multiple learning modules in human decision making

Wulfram Gerstner, Johanni Michael Brea, Alireza Modirshanechi, Kerstin Preuschoff, Marco Philipp Lehmann, Vasiliki Liakoni

Learning how to reach a reward over long series of actions is a remarkable capability of humans, and potentially guided by multiple parallel learning modules. Current brain imaging of learning modules is limited by (i) simple experimental paradigms, (ii) e ...

ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE2022