The neuronal substrate underlying order and interval representations in sequential tasks: A biologically based robot study

Sequence learning tasks depend on the ability to acquire and control the order of actions and their proper timing. Several studies have shown that in sequence learning different areas of the brain are involved when recalling the order of actions and their proper interval. One hypothesis proposes that two separate areas of the brain interact with each other, one computes order while the other would compute the interval. A second hypothesis proposes that one area computes both, order and interval. To better understand how this computation of order and interval might be realized by the brain, we developed a robot based architecture and investigated the behavioral and architectural implications of these two hypothesis: one or two neuronal areas computing order and interval. Using a sequence learning foraging task we show that performance is enhanced in case of distributed processes. However, we show that as a drawback, explicit interval information can not be reconstructed.