arxivcs.NE2026-07-17
From Optimal Policies to Individual Differences: Rethinking Reinforcement Learning for Biology
Patrick Govoni, Palina Bartashevich, Clémence Bergerot, Valerii Chirkov, Valentin Lecheval, Pawel Romanczuk
Reinforcement learning (RL) is primarily known as a computational method for optimizing control tasks, but it is increasingly used to explain biological behavior. While RL successfully captures key aspects of biology, a major gap remains: between-agent behavioral variability. Con…