arXiv:2609.21161v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Most artificial neural systems are built to map given inputs to outputs. Adaptive agents face a prior problem: they must act without enough evidence, seek encounters with the world, and revise behavior when evidence appears. We propose another starting point for intelligent neural networks: proactive search without signals, curiosity at its most basic. We ask whether it can come from a minimal untrained circuit. The spiking unit studied here inverts its response to input: with no signal in its window it fires faster; once signals arrive it switches to a slower, inverted regime. Search needs three or more such oscillators in counter-phase, each reading the same input in a different time window. With no training, supervision, parameter tuning, or controller, the composite switches on its own between exploratory spiral search and exploitative tracking, finding both first-degree symmetry and second-degree groups. The switch comes from tempora...