In this preprint, in collaboration with Jonathan Rubin, Timothy Verstynen (Pittsburgh, PA) and Catalina Vich (Palma, Spain) we introduce CBGTPy, a virtual environment for designing and testing goal-directed agents with internal dynamics that are modeled on the cortico-basal-ganglia-thalamic (CBGT) pathways in the mammalian brain.
CBGTPy enables researchers to investigate the internal dynamics of the CBGT system during a variety of tasks, allowing for the formation of testable predictions about animal behavior and neural activity. The framework has been designed around the principle of flexibility, such that many experimental parameters in a decision making paradigm can be easily defined and modified.
In our preprint, we demonstrate the capabilities of CBGTPy across a range of single and multi-choice tasks, highlighting the ease of set up and the biologically realistic behavior that it produces. We show that CBGTPy is extensible enough to apply to a range of experimental protocols and to allow for the implementation of model extensions with minimal developmental effort.
To know more:
- Matthew Clapp, Jyotika Bahuguna, Cristina Giossi, Jonathan E. Rubin, Timothy Verstynen, Catalina Vich (2023). CBGTPy: An extensible cortico-basal ganglia-thalamic framework for modeling biological decision making. BioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.09.05.556301