Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies by Matt Mogk Read Free Book Online Page A

frequent paths through the maze but also paths that they’d rarely taken or had not yet taken at all. The rats were trying to build mental maps to help them make navigation choices, proving that memory is an integral part of the decision-making process. Researcher Anoopum Guptanotes that this is true even if the goal is something as simple as sniffing out a piece of cheese:
    Our work provides clues into how animals must construct a complete, fully navigable representation of their environment in order to move around, even if they’ve only partially explored that environment. 16
    Memory and learning are so tied to our ability to make simple choices that without them, a zombie would likely not be able to tell the difference between a door and a wall, let alone find its way out of a dead-end alley. A front door covered in paper or tape could be enough to confuse this type of zombie, rendering the door virtually invisible.
    But to understand the potential differences between learning in the living and in the undead, we look to findings from the California Institute of Technology that show that humans use a complex combination of two learning processes to navigate through their world: (1) model-free learning and (2) model-based learning.
    Model-free learning is based on trial-and-error comparisons between the anticipated reward and the reward we actually receive in any given situation. For example, a zombie bangs its head against a brick wall and doesn’t gain access to the screaming children inside the house. It then bangs its head against a window, the window breaks, and the zombie gets rewarded with a nice meal. Moving forward it will now be more interested in windows than walls.
    By contrast, model-based learning is a more complex system whereby the brain builds a virtual map of the environment to understand different situations. A model-based thinker doesn’t need to stick with what he knows from past experience and so is able to make sudden strategic shifts.
    If zombies are indeed unable to accomplish complex tasks such as unlocking doors or using weapons, it may be because they rely too heavily on a largely model-free view of the world that is not adequately balanced by the higher-functioning model-based system. In this case, they could learn little lessons along the way, such as that walls aren’t good for eating children but windows are. They would not, however, achieve great leaps in knowledge and eventually overpower humans with their smarts alone.
    According to Romero, zombies develop the ability to work together in teams. They communicate with one another. They can learn to enjoy music, follow directions, use weapons, and eventually even outsmart humans. Romero zombies also retain memory of their past lives and personalities and act out past rituals and habits. Their learning ability seems to far outpace common beliefs about the modern zombie.
    Zombies apparently must possess some level of memory and learning to navigate through our world, and the limit to their developmental abilities may be related to their sleeping habits. A study from Harvard University strongly suggests that sleep enhances memory and learning in humans. If, as many believe, the undead never actually rest in their constant search for fresh meat, a zombie’s inability to develop new skills may have much more to do with its insomnia than with its actual potential to learn.
    The Harvard study’s coauthor Robert Stickgold explains that task-related dreams are triggered by the sleeping brain’s desire to consolidate challenging new information and to figure out how to use it. Making even the most basic choicesrequires constant low-level learning, but if zombies don’t sleep at all, then their ability to collect data and cognitively advance may be shot.
    By endlessly hunting humans, the undead may be robbing themselves of the chance to become even deadlier hunters. So if you ever see a zombie nodding off for a quick nap, you might want to think