State Inference

Animals and humans rapidly adapt their behavior to dynamic environmental changes, such as predator threats or fluctuating food resources, often without immediate rewards. Existing literature posits that animals rely on internal representations of the environment, termed “beliefs”, for their decision policy. However, previous work ties belief updates to external reward signals, which does not explain adaptation in scenarios where trial-and-error approaches are inefficient or potentially perilous. In this work, we propose that the brain utilize dynamic representations that continuously infer the

…that animals perform model-based state inference to predict environmental state changes and adjust their behavior rapidly, rather than slowly updating choice values. This model-based inference process can be described using Bayesian change-point models. F