[FRIAM] solving mazes

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Hi, All, 

 

Due to a review I have been working on, I have been dragged back into
thinking about maze learning in rats.  Any animal I have ever known, when
confined, will explore the boundaries of its enclosure.  Cows, for instance
will beat a path just inside the barbed wire that encloses them.  So a maze
is not only a series of pathways but it is also an enclosure.  If the rat
puts his left whisker against the left wall of the maze, he will eventually
get to the goal box, right.  It works with the Hampton Court Maze.  On the
second run, he can now use odor cues, such that any time he encounters his
own odor both entering and leaving a passage way, he should just skip that
passage way.  

 

So I am wondering, you topologists (??) out there, how general is the
statement, "every maze is an enclosure"  and what is the limitation on the
idea that any maze can be solved by putting your right or left hand on a
wall and continuing to walk until you find the goal or are let out of the
maze.  Now I should quickly say that rat mazes are usually composed of a
series of bifurcating choice points, where the rat can go either left or
right. Some choices lead ultimately to dead ends.  In sum, a runway in such
a maze can go straight, turn R or L without choice or form a T with a right
or left choice.  My intuition is that no such maze can be designed that does
not permit the boundary following strategy.  

 

Nick 

 

Nick Thompson

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

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