{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/short-term-plasticity-as-cause-effect","title":"Short-term plasticity as cause-effect hypothesis testing in distal reward learning","arxiv_id":"1402.0710","date":"2014-02-04","proceeding":null,"authors":["Andrea Soltoggio"],"abstract":"Asynchrony, overlaps and delays in sensory-motor signals introduce ambiguity\nas to which stimuli, actions, and rewards are causally related. Only the\nrepetition of reward episodes helps distinguish true cause-effect relationships\nfrom coincidental occurrences. In the model proposed here, a novel plasticity\nrule employs short and long-term changes to evaluate hypotheses on cause-effect\nrelationships. Transient weights represent hypotheses that are consolidated in\nlong-term memory only when they consistently predict or cause future rewards.\nThe main objective of the model is to preserve existing network topologies when\nlearning with ambiguous information flows. Learning is also improved by biasing\nthe exploration of the stimulus-response space towards actions that in the past\noccurred before rewards. The model indicates under which conditions beliefs can\nbe consolidated in long-term memory, it suggests a solution to the\nplasticity-stability dilemma, and proposes an interpretation of the role of\nshort-term plasticity.","url_abs":"http://arxiv.org/abs/1402.0710v5","url_pdf":"http://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.0710v5.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"short-term-plasticity-as-cause-effect","repo_url":"https://github.com/soltoggio/Short-term-plasticity-as-hypothesis-testing-in-distal-reward-learning","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"hypothesis-testing","task_name":"Two-sample testing"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}