Continual decision-making dynamics across biological organisms

Decision-making is a central function of adaptive behaviour in biological agents. However, strategies for adaptive decision-making can vary substantially across species. Here, we aim to extend the comparative scope of decision-making analyses to consider more phylogenetically diverse organisms. To do so, we introduce the Continual Decision Making Dynamics (CDMD) framework, which characterises decision-making as a temporally extended, history-sensitive process that is sustained by self-organising and self-regulating interactions. In particular, drawing on empirical examples, we demonstrate how CDMD can accommodate the organisation of control architectures that support more distributed and decentralised modes of decision-making, and facilitate a comparative approach to decision-making strategies across phylogenetic and organisational scales. We discuss how our model can be situated among other related approaches to decision-making, capturing a distinctive subset of decision strategies that can be modelled in the absence of explicit representational structures. By foregrounding regulatory control and organisational constraints, the CDMD framework aims to provide an integrative basis for studying how diverse biological systems sustain ongoing choice in changing environments.