Correctness is its own reward: bootstrapping error codes in self-guided reinforcement learning
Ziyi Gong, Fabiola Duarte Ortiz, Richard Mooney, John Pearson · COSYNE 2025
In nature, many skilled behaviors are learned without explicit reinforcement. Instead, this learning is thought to be guided by an internal estimate of performance error, yet the mechanisms by which such estimates are acquired remain unknown. In male zebra finches, juveniles are first tutored by an adult male during a sensory learning phase, followed by a sensorimotor phase in which they practice by themselves in order to replicate the song. Inspired by models of corollary discharge and predictive coding, we hypothesize that in the sensory phase, juvenile auditory areas gradually learn to canc
ePoster · Neuroscience