From behavioural primitives to intelligent behaviour

A central task of all mobile animals is to locate hidden resources in a potentially complex environment. For more than 100 years, the study of animals in a maze has been one of the central analytic paradigms to study this task, producing important insights in animal learning and decision making but also memory, cognitive maps and spatial cognition more generally. Up to now, however, little is known about the algorithmic rules that animals use when navigating maze-like environments. The goal of this project is to fill this knowledge gap.