Breadcrumb
Is the brain Bayesian?
Fri 08 February 2013, 15:40
David Leslie
Bristol
Organisers: Nick Whiteley, Feng Yu
ABSTRACT
I present results from two recent papers in which Bayesian ideas are shown to replicate either desirable or observed behaviour for sequential decision-makers. In the first part of the talk I present and discuss an old and inherently Bayesian idea of Thompson (Biometrika 1933) on how to balance exploration and exploitation in a sequential decision-making problem, and give a sketch idea of our first proof that the method is asymptotically consistent. I then present a model of learning and decision-making suitable for `jumpy but sticky' envirnments, and show that the model replicates several of the paradoxical effects observed in rat decision-making.