Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41550772›Full record

ArticleiScience2026

Reinforcement learning in densely recurrent biological networks.

Miles Walter Churchland, Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in iScience, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

2 authors.

Miles Walter ChurchlandDepartment of Medicine and Life Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), Dr Aiguader, 88, 08003 Barcelona, Spain.
Jordi Garcia-OjalvoDepartment of Medicine and Life Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), Dr Aiguader, 88, 08003 Barcelona, Spain.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Training highly recurrent networks is a technical challenge: gradient-based methods suffer from exploding or vanishing gradients, while purely evolutionary searches converge slowly. We introduce a hybrid, gradient-free optimization framework that implements reinforcement learning by coupling global evolutionary exploration with local direct search exploitation. The method, termed ENOMAD (Evolutionary Nonlinear Optimization with Mesh Adaptive Direct search), is benchmarked on a suite of food-foraging tasks instantiated in the fully mapped neural connectome of the nematode

Indexed as

biocomputational methodneuroscience

Identifiers

PMID41550772
PMCPMC12803941

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.