Sanja Bauer Mikulovic (Magdeburg)

Integration from trained to natural behaviors
May 22, 2025, 3 PM, Michael Lankeit Lecture Hall, German Primate Center

To survive in an uncertain and dynamic environment, animals need to integrate the relevant information in their environment. Systems neuroscientists have conventionally simplified and made this problem more tractable by studying trained behaviors where they train animals to integrate sensory evidence. This idealization has allowed neuroscientific investigation into neural mechanisms underlying integration. In my talk, I will present theoretical work showing that integration, as a behavioral computation, can be extended from the realm of trained behaviors to (social) foraging behaviors performed by animals naturally thus bridging a much needed gap between mechanistic models in systems neuroscience and behavioural ecology. This modeling approach opens up the opportunity to quantitatively study neural mechanisms of naturalistic decision making.