Nir Gov (Weizmann Institute of Science)
How animals make decisions on where to go ? how animal groups make such collective decisions ? We present a spin-based model for how animal groups and single animals make navigational decisions on their direction and speed. The model describes motion that is diffusive in the disordered phase, and run-and-tumble in the ordered phase. The model predicts a series of trajectories and a hierarchy of bifurcations in the presence of multiple identical targets. The geometry of these bifurcations is affected by the angular dependence of the interactions between the spins that represent the different targets. These predictions are compared to observations in different animal species. This model presents a new approach to decision-making in animals on the move, and as a new class of deciding-active matter.
We then extend this model to describe abstract decision-making in the brain, and show that its an extension of the well-known Drift-Diffusion Model (DDM) for decision-making. Specifically, we propose that near the critical regime of the order-disorder transition the dynamics have a run-and-tumble nature which endows the decision-making with certain advantages. Comparing to experiments on humans, we provide evidence that support the conclusion that the decision-making circuit in the brain indeed resides near this transition line.
Contact : W. Ahmed, R. Ramazashvili
