Dr. Peter Dayan, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics

Date/Time

Monday, April 17, 2023, 15:00-16:30 (JST)

Abstract

Risking your Tail: Curiosity, Danger & Exploration

Responding to novelty is a key feature of adaptive behavior. Animals continuously detect and learn about novel stimuli and choose whether to explore or avoid given limited information. There are rather great differences in the propensities of individuals to engage with novelty – with substantial consequences for what they are able to learn.
Here, we consider formal treatments of risk (called the conditional value at risk) and pessimistic prior expectations as ways of modeling these differences. Although the effects of risk on isolated decisions are quite well understood, additional issues arise in the context of sequences of choices, something that is inevitable in the case of exploration.
This is joint work with Kevin Shen and Chris Gagne.

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