Physics of Learning and Adaptation I

3:00 pm – 5:36 pm, Tuesday March 18 // Session MAR-J58 //Anaheim Hilton, Pacific A (Ballroom Level)

Chair:: Sarah Marzen, Scripps, Pitzer & Claremont McKenna College
Topics:
Sponsored by: DBIO

Emergent discreteness in optimal behavior

4:48 pm – 5:00 pm

Presenter: Michael C Abbott (Yale University)

Author: Benjamin Machta (Yale University)

Many organisms discretize their space of behaviors, in the extreme case making all-or-nothing choices in response to continuous signals. Is this driven by balancing costs related to the number of potential actions with the benefits of more accurate response? We explore when such discretization is instead optimal for responding to weak noisy signals, connecting to emergent simplicity from information theory.

PRESENTATIONS (11)