Animal Cognition and Decision Strategies: From Behaviour to Computation
A special issue of Biology (ISSN 2079-7737). This special issue belongs to the section "Neuroscience".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2026 | Viewed by 7
Special Issue Editors
Interests: animal cognition; system neuroscience; vision science; computational biology; machine intelligence
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
A central imperative in cognitive and behavioural neuroscience is to understand not just what an animal does, but how and why it decides to do what it does. Interpreting animal performance in behavioural tasks is inherently challenging, as most can be solved through multiple, often hidden, cognitive strategies. Disambiguating these strategies to reveal their underlying computational mechanisms constitutes a critical frontier. Making this leap, therefore, is essential for honing our understanding of animal cognition and guiding the development of interpretable, biologically inspired artificial intelligence (AI).
Animal models remain the cornerstone of behavioural neuroscience and neuroengineering, offering invaluable access to the neural, computational, and ecological drivers of behaviour. Thus, this Special Issue highlights work that leverages these models to investigate cognition, particularly in the face of uncertainty, flexibility, and dynamic environments.
We welcome studies using classical species (e.g., non-human primates, rodents, zebrafish), as well as key emerging and non-traditional models (e.g., insects, cephalopods, songbirds), that advance our understanding of cognitive and behavioural processes. Moreover, we welcome contributions that infer latent cognitive processes from behaviour or apply computational or theoretical approaches to uncover the mechanisms of intelligent action.
We particularly encourage submissions that reveal the cognitive and neural bases of naturalistic behaviour, identify cross-species principles of cognition, or characterise flexible, high-dimensional, problem-solving strategies.
By uniting these perspectives, this Special Issue aims to advance our understanding of natural intelligence, fostering a new synthesis of insights that bridges behavioural neuroscience and AI.
Dr. HaDi MaBouDi
Guest Editors
Dr. Alice Bridges
Guest Editor Assistant
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- animal models
- bio-inspired computation
- brain–behaviour mapping
- cognitive mechanisms
- cognitive neuroscience
- cognitive strategies
- comparative cognition
- computational modelling
- decision-making
- learning and adaptation
- naturalistic behaviour
- neural computation
- neuroethology
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