The brain shrank and started working
v06 in simulation, 111 cells down to a ring of twelve.
The brain works in simulation. The body went from 111 cells to a ring of twelve, plus six inner reservoir cells that hold a fading echo of recent history. Two simulated creatures that lived different lives end up in clearly different internal states.
The biggest change is in the cell itself. It was a leaky integrator; it is now predictive. It reports surprise instead of raw input. Under unchanging input the old field went flat. The new one stays differentiated.
One honest correction came out of the tests. I expected the predictive cell to rescue the weather and daylight side, which stayed weak. It does not, and it should not. Slow steady signals are easy to predict, so a surprise cell correctly goes quiet on them. Keeping that side alive at night is the closed loop’s job, and that comes later.