Animals constantly have to make decisions: they often have to choose between foraging strategies, mates, territories, and social partners. Thus, proper decision-making is fundamental for survival. Studies in primates and rodents revealed a stochastic perceptual evidence accumulation process during decision-making. What about birds?

Animals constantly have to make decisions: they often have to choose between foraging strategies, mates, territories, and social partners. Thus, proper decision-making is fundamental for survival. Studies in primates and rodents revealed a stochastic perceptual evidence accumulation process during decision-making. What about birds? The present study investigated whether perceptual decision-making in pigeons shows behavioral and computational dynamics comparable to those in mammals and rodents. Using a novel "pigeon helmet" with liquid shutter displays that control visual input to individual eyes/hemispheres with precise timing, we revealed highly similar perceptual decision-making dynamics. Thus, both mammals and birds seem to share this core cognitive process that possibly represents a fundamental constituent of decision-making throughout vertebrates. We additionally discovered that avian hemispheres start independent sensory accumulation processes without any major interhemispheric exchange under conditions of time pressure.
 

Wittek, N., Matsui, H., Behroozi, M., Otto, T., Wittek, K., Sarı, N., Stoecker, S., Letzner, S., Choudhary, V., Peterburs, J., & Güntürkün, O. (2021). Unihemispheric evidence accumulation in pigeons. Journal of experimental psychology. Animal learning and cognition, 47(3), 303–316. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/xan0000290