2. Experiment 1 ‐ Inducing degeneration

How to run?

Building

1. git checkout inducing-degeneration.
2. Open dynamic-neural-field-degeneration folder and run build.bat.
3. The inducing-degeneration.exe will be located in dynamic-neural-field-degeneration\dynamic-neural-field-degeneration\build\x64-release\Release\.

Setting up the experiment

You will only need to build the project once, afterwards if you want to change the experiment parameters, you just have to change the experiment_parameters.json file. In this file, you will have the following options (hopefully, the names of the variables are pretty self-explanatory):

{
  "experiment_parameters": {
    "numberOfTrials": 100,
    "startingExternalStimulus": 0,
    "decisionTolerance": 2.0,
    "isDataSavingOn": false,
    "isVisualizationOn": true,
    "isDebugModeOn": true
  },

  "degeneration_parameters": {
    "#comment_type": "NEURONS_DEACTIVATE, WEIGHTS_RANDOMIZE, WEIGHTS_REDUCE, WEIGHTS_DEACTIVATE",
    "experimentType": "NEURONS_DEACTIVATE",
    "#comment_total_number": "720*280 = 201600 or 720 or 280",
    "totalNumberOfElementsToDegenerate": 720,
    "#comment_fieldToDegenerate": "perceptual, output",
    "fieldToDegenerate": "perceptual",
    "numberOfElementsToDegeneratePerIteration": 1,
    "initialPercentageOfDegeneration": 0,
    "targetPercentageOfDegeneration": 100,
    "incrementOfDegenerationInPercentage": 1
  }
}

What should it look like?

If you set "isVisualizationOn": true, you will get the following output depending on the selected degenerative condition.

'Kill' pre-synaptic neurons

'Kill' post-synaptic neurons

'Kill' inter-field synaptic connections

Randomize inter-field synaptic connections

Reduce inter-field synaptic connections by 95%

Where to look for generated data?

At dynamic-neural-field-degeneration\dynamic-neural-field-degeneration\data\results you will find .txt files with the evolution of the output field centroid as degeneration occurs for each position and degenerative condition.

Additionally, you will find a analysis-files folder with some .R scripts used to generate some plots (plots folder) and some statistical analysis (analysis folder).