Are Artificial Dendrites useful in NeuroEvolution?

The significant role of dendritic processing within neuronal networks has become increasingly clear. This letter explores the effects of including a simple dendrite-inspired mechanism into neuroevolution. The phenomenon of separate dendrite activation thresholds on connections is allowed to emerge under an evolutionary process. It is shown how such processing can be positively selected for, particularly for connections between the hidden and output layer, and increases performance.