Title: Dynamical Systems Theory of Embodied Perceptual Decision-Making

Speaker: Dr. Anastasia Bizyaeva, Cornell University

Abstract: Decision-making is a fundamental building block of behavior, both in natural settings such as animal movement and in engineered settings such as autonomous robotics. In both of these contexts, decisions are often made on the move through an interplay of continuously changing sensory information and goal-oriented action selection. In this talk, we present a dynamical systems framework for understanding how discrete choices emerge through feedback between neural activity and movement through space. Starting from a stochastic ring-attractor model motivated by biological neural circuits involved in perceptual evidence integration, we will show how reduced representations such as competing neural accumulators and local drift-diffusion descriptions of choice arise at different scales of the same process. Bifurcation analysis of the reduced decision dynamics then reveals how movement reshapes competition among alternatives, and how asymmetries in target geometry and quality bias transitions from compromise to commitment captured through movement. These results link canonical models of perceptual choice and reveal how environmental geometry shapes embodied decisions. We will illustrate how insights from this biologically inspired modeling and analysis translate to novel design principles for autonomous behavior in mobile robots.

Bio: Anastasia Bizyaeva is an assistant professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University, where she leads the Control and Computation for Complex Systems Group. Her research explores mathematical connections between flexible behavior in biological, social, and cognitive systems, and the design of autonomous and artificially intelligent behaviors in engineered teams. She is a member of several graduate fields at Cornell, including Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, and the Center for Applied Mathematics. Prior to joining Cornell she was a Postdoctoral Scholar with the NSF AI Institute in Dynamic Systems at the University of Washington. She received her Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 2022 and her B.A. in physics with a minor in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley from 2016. Her work has received several recognitions, including the 2025 George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award from IEEE Control Systems Society, the Princeton School of Engineering and Applied Science Award for Excellence, and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Award.

Zoom: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/94779802823

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