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Paper Detail

Paper: PS-2B.47
Session: Poster Session 2B
Location: H Fläche 1.OG
Session Time: Sunday, September 15, 17:15 - 20:15
Presentation Time:Sunday, September 15, 17:15 - 20:15
Presentation: Poster
Publication: 2019 Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience, 13-16 September 2019, Berlin, Germany
Paper Title: Deep reinforcement learning in a spatial navigation task: Multiple contexts and their representation
Manuscript:  Click here to view manuscript
License: Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32470/CCN.2019.1151-0
Authors: Nicolas Diekmann, Thomas Walther, Sandhiya Vijayabaskaran, Sen Cheng, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
Abstract: Deep learning has recently been combined with Q-learning (Mnih et al., 2015) to enable learning difficult tasks such as playing video games based only on visual input. Stable learning in the in the deep Q network (DQN) is facilitated by the use of memory replay, which means that previous experiences are stored and sampled from during an offline learning period. We evaluate the DQN’s ability to learn and retain multiple variations of a spatial navigation task in a virtual environment. Task variations are presented in visually distinct contexts by varying light conditions and environmental textures. Replay memory capacity is varied to measure its effect on task retention. The representations of multiple contexts learned by the DQN agents are analyzed and compared. We show that DQN agents learn a preference for common actions early on, irrespective of replay memory capacity. A limited replay memory causes agents to confuse state-values. Furthermore, we find that contexts are quickly forgotten as soon as corresponding experiences are no longer available in the replay memory.