The Drunken Mice

Abstract

In this project we investigate, how a theory about the impact of drugs (alcohol) on cognition could look like. We used simulated agents ("mice"), which live in groups, to understand the effects of alcohol. The agents are programmed according to the Psi - theory, which is a theory about the interaction of cognitive, emotional and motivational processes. We added to the normal (simulated) environment of the mice, which in-cludes sources of food, water and "healing herbs", sources of "julihuana", which is a beer-like beverage. Although in the original formulation of the theory the consumption of drugs was not considered, the behaviour of the "mice", which have access to "julihuana" changed in a way, which exhibits strong parallels to human behaviour. The drunken and (after a time) often addicted mice lost their social contacts (less friends), their cognitive processes (perception, remembering, planning) became rough and shallow. The mice felt "strong" when drunken and very weak without julihuana. When drunken therefore they became very aggressive, but depressive when without julihuana. Keywords: memory; plan; addiction; cognitive map, alcohol; action-regulation.


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