[alife] SAB workshop call reminder

[Ben Jones]

This is a follow-up reminder for the workshop on 'Evolutionary transitions
of brain-body
couplings', to be held on 24th August 2010 in Paris, as part of the 11th
International Conference on
Simulation of Adaptive Behaviour (SAB'10). A copy of the original call is
given below.

Due to organisational constraints we have the following important update:

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please inform us via a brief email (<
B.H.Jones at cs.bham.ac.uk>) of your intention to submit a contribution no
later than 30th June 2010. The original submission deadline of 9th July
still applies.

Original Call
-------------

We are organising a workshop on 'Evolutionary transitions of brain-body
couplings', which is part of the 11th International Conference on
Simulation of Adaptive Behaviour (SAB'10) to be held in Paris, August
24-28, 2010. You are welcome to submit a relevant contribution in one of
the following formats:

- A position paper (2-3 pages)
- A full paper (6-8 pages)
- A demo video

Please submit your contributions electronically to Dr Ben Jones per Email:
(<B.H.Jones at cs.bham.ac.uk>)  by Friday, 9th July 2010. All accepted
contributions will be included on a workshop CD and contributors will be
invited to give either an oral or a poster presentation on the Workshop.

Overview
--------------
In a nutshell, `evolutionary transitions of brain-body couplings' encompass
those evolutionary events that
led from the distinct nervous system body plan morphology couplings of a
common ancestor to a
diverse range of descendant nervous system body plan morphology couplings.
Two types of animal
morphology are typically cited in the literature – those having radial
symmetry, for example most
jellyfish, and those having bilateral symmetry (e.g. the flatworm).
Interestingly, these also often have very distinct types of neural
architecture indicating that body morphology and control have become
tightly coupled as a response to evolutionary selection pressure.

It is often suggested that bilateral body symmetry has emerged secondarily
to radial body symmetry and
together with this, the nervous system has been pressured to become
organised in a way that 'fits' (with the body morphology). The coupling
between both is conjectured to have been driven by the niche of the animal,
together with a need to expend a minimal amount of energy. Energy can be
lost because of the metabolic processes of the animal, e.g. neural
information processing, and, because of movement.

Thus, we can take inspiration from the most 'basic' of animals (e.g. the
hydra, flatworm, lamprey, c. elegans etc.) and develop animats embedded in
strictly controlled environments; we can then visualise and analyse the
evolutionary process, and the types of neural property (architectural and
computational etc.) and body plan couplings that emerge. We can elucidate
the mechanisms by which `brain' should become coupled to `body' (although
note, we are more interested in `nervous system' since this is more
primitive than `brain')and shed light on how the behavioural process
emerges as a property of this coupling.

For further details and ongoing updates, see
http://www.bhjones.com/sabWorkshop/
For information about the conference itself, see
http://www.sab2010.org/wiki

Workshop Organizers:

Ben Jones, University of Birmingham, UK
Yaochu Jin, University of Surrey, UK