Scientists at University of California Irvine and San Diego is working on a project that will help identifying the decision making mehcanisms of the brain. The research involves monitoring decision making ablities of rodents during arbitrary change of food reward locations, where the animal needs to make new decisions and adapt to their new environment. In other words, the ultimate goal is to learn more about decision making when faced with uncertainity, where to date we have very little knowledge about.

The data obtained from rodents will then be transferred to a software which controls a robot and then the robot will be expected to replicate the same kind of behavior. The software is designed by taking human brain mechanisms as its basis, so when the robot navigates through similar conditions, new information will be gathered about decisioin making. In additioin to health applications, the study can help creating more intelligent robots which are able to adapt to uncertain ciscumstances.

Reference: www.physorg.com/news176581936.html