Evolutionary Neural Topiary: Growing and Sculpting Artificial Neurons to Order

Designing artificial systems with ever more biologically-plausible ‘brains’ continues apace and permits investigations into the computational capabilities of engineered systems. Creating artificial neurons with biologically-realistic morphologies is however a non-trivial problem. This paper addresses growing neurons to order, neurons with morphologies exhibiting strong biological traits. A biologically-inspired simulator of neural development is coupled with a genetic algorithm to evolve 3-dimensional neuron morphologies. The morphology of a biological neuron provides the exemplar target against which the developmental evolution process is gauged