@inbook{2001421,
author={James Marshall and  Rafal Bogacz and  Anna Dornhaus and  Robert Planque and  Tim Kovacs and Nigel R. Franks},
title={On optimal decision making in brains and social insect colonies},
booktitle={Modelling Natural Action Selection},
editor={Anil K. Seth and  Tony J. Prescott and Joanna J. Bryson},
publisher={Cambridge University Press},
month={June},
year={2011},
abstract={The problem of how to compromise between speed and accuracy in decision making
faces organisms at many levels of biological complexity. Striking parallels are evident
between decision making in primate brains and collective decision making in social
insect colonies: in both systems separate populations accumulate evidence for alternative
choices, when one population reaches a threshold a decision is made for the
corresponding alternative, and this threshold may be varied to compromise between the
speed and accuracy of decision making. In primate decision making simple models of
these processes have been shown, under certain parameterisations, to implement the
statistically optimal procedure that minimises decision time for any given error rate. In
this chapter, we adapt these same analysis techniques and apply them to new models of
collective decision making in social insect colonies.We show that social insect colonies
may also be able to achieve statistically optimal collective decision making in a very
similar way to primate brains, via direct competition between evidence-accumulating
populations. This optimality result makes testable predictions for how collective decision
making in social insects should be organised. Our approach also represents the first
attempt to identify a common theoretical framework for the study of decision making in
diverse biological systems.


[This originally appeared in the Journal of the Royal Society: Interface, 6, pp. 1065–1074. November 2009.]},
abstract-url={http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/Publications/pub_master.jsp?id=2001421},
keyword={},
pubtype={7}
}