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CTN: Roozbeh Kiani
December 19, 2025 @ 11:30 am - 1:00 pm
Seminar Time: 11:30am
Date: 12/19/25
Seminar Location: JLG, L5-084
Date: 12/19/25
Seminar Location: JLG, L5-084
Host: Tahereh Toosi
Title: Flexible decision-making: policies and rules
Abstract: Flexible behavior requires flexible decision-making. We adapt seamlessly to changing environments—adjusting biases, altering decision rules, and inferring hidden task contexts—often without explicit cues. In this talk, I will outline a framework that formalizes different levels of this flexibility and show how these adjustments are implemented in neural codes across the frontoparietal cortex. I will highlight three forms of decision flexibility: (1) Bias adjustments, driven by asymmetric rewards, shift neural activity along the decision variable axis; (2) Rule changes, such as varying sensory weights in a multi-feature discrimination task, produce rotational changes in the population geometry, supporting rapid changes in decision policy; and (3) Hierarchical inference, where animals infer hidden contexts to adapt to task structure, is reflected in the emergence of latent variables represented in distributed subspaces.