“ Mood ”expression of living neuronal network with audio input/output interface

Abstract

In recent years, research on ”artificial life” which emulates behavior based on the biological principles of organisms in semi-artificial living systems has gained significant attention. This study im-(breakpoint)plemented a hardware hybrid agent with a voice I/O interface that connects to the outside world. The agent uses a living neuronal network of cultured dissociated neurons as its core to reflect the‘ fluctuation’ of biological signals in behavior. The agent converts voice input to text, analyzes its sentiment using a Japanese sentiment dictionary, and computes an emotional polarity value. Based on this value, constant current stimulation is applied to the cultured neuronal network. The neuronal activity patterns induced by the stimulation are identified by learning-type fuzzy template matching (FTM), and the agent expresses the mood of the biological neuronal network through pitch. The mood is defined by the distance between pre-made templates corresponding to pleasant/unpleasant responses and the input pattern, expressed in the pitch of the output sound. When speech is directed at the agent, the output response reflects the history of all inputs, showing a tendency to express a summary of continuous pleasant/unpleasant reac-(breakpoint)tions rather than a single reaction. Furthermore, depending on the spontaneous activity of the core living neuronal network, various individual tendencies, such as overall pleasant or unpleasant emotional trends, were observed.