Lilian A. Weber
Osnabrück University
SAB 2026 Workshop · Berlin, Germany · October 2026
Wanting What is Needed
From Homeostatic Control to Adaptive Behavior
A half-day workshop on how internal regulation, bodily needs and viability constraints shape value formation, motivation and adaptive behavior in animals and artificial agents.
Concept
Grounding motivation in internal regulation
Classical reinforcement learning and cognitive models often begin with externally specified rewards. Biological organisms, by contrast, are autonomous learning agents whose behavior is constrained by the need to sustain their own viability. This workshop asks how internal physiological regulation can ground decision-making, value formation and motivated behavior.
We aim to foster a shared interdisciplinary conversation across machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics, neuroscience, biology, physiology, ethology and control theory. The goal is to clarify how homeostatic and allostatic regulation can contribute to adaptive behavior in both biological organisms and artificial agents.
Homeostasis & allostasis
Intrinsic needs
Value formation
Motivated behavior
Embodied robotics
Adaptive agents
Neuroscience & physiology
Control theory
Invited speakers
Confirmed speakers
Lola Cañamero
CY Cergy Paris University
Antonio Damasio (online)
University of Southern California
Program
The half-day schedule
Times are provisional and will be updated once the final SAB 2026 workshop slot and room are confirmed.
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Opening remarks: Concept of the workshop
Naoto Yoshida, Ismael T. Freire, Louis L’Haridon and Boris Gutkin (online)
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Invited talk 1: Lilian A. Weber
Osnabrück University · Neuroscience
Rethinking reinforcement learning in biological agents: the role of internal states and inference in generating reward signals
AbstractHumans and other animals routinely adapt their behaviour to changes in their circumstances, including the external as well as their internal environment (goals and needs). Reinforcement learning (RL) has emerged as the go-to framework to understand how goal-directed agents learn from interacting with their environment. In this talk, I will argue that the conventional formulation of RL misses a critical component of reward related processing and goal-directed action in biological agents. Standard RL models treat the reward signal as an exogenous input - something given to the learner rather than generated by it. This assumption overlooks a crucial part of the biological intelligence: in living systems, primary rewards emerge endogenously from interoceptive inference: the ongoing process of predicting and regulating internal (bodily) states. I will review evidence from the animal and human literature on the origins and flexibility of biological reward functions to derive constraints that an updated RL model should fulfil, and present some ongoing efforts to formalise and empirically study the relevant inference mechanisms. These efforts focus on internal (motivational) states in the context of effort-based decision making and their neural correlates.
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Invited talk 2: Lola Cañamero
CY Cergy Paris University · AI / Robotics
TBA
AbstractTBA
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Invited short talk: Jeff Krichmar
University of California, Irvine
Modeling How Environmental Pressures on Cephalopods Influences Episodic Memory and Decision-Making
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Lightning talks
Three 5-minute talks selected from extended abstract submissions.
Playing to Survive or Surviving to Play?
The University of Tokyo
Hierarchical behaviors in homeostatic optimal control
TU Berlin, BCCN Berlin, Einstein Center for Neuroscience Berlin
Interoceptive Attention as Dynamic Homeostatic Prioritization in a Foraging Agent
University of Cape Town
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Break & poster session
Poster presentations from selected contributions.
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Invited talk 3: Antonio Damasio (Online)
University of Southern California · Neuroscience, Cognitive Science and the Future of AI/Robotics.
TBA
AbstractTBA
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Panel discussion
Panelists: Lilian A. Weber, Lola Cañamero, Antonio Damasio (online), and Boris Gutkin (online).
Panel moderator: Ismael T. Freire.
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Closing remarks
Naoto Yoshida, Ismael T. Freire and Louis L’Haridon.
Call for contributions
Extended abstracts for lightning talks and posters
We welcome published, ongoing and preliminary work that connects internal regulation, homeostasis, allostasis, motivation and adaptive behavior across biological and artificial systems.
Note: Participation in this workshop requires a full registration for SAB 2026.
Submission format
- Extended abstract, maximum 3 pages for main text
- References, appendix and acknowledgements may be additional
- Springer LNCS style: Style file format
Important dates
- Submission deadline:
5 August 202612 August 202614 September 2026 AoE - Notification to authors:
19 August 202618 September 202621 September 2026 - Workshop date: 19 October 2026
Contributions
Accepted extended abstracts
Posters
Playing to Survive or Surviving to Play?
The University of Tokyo
Inferring Internal Vigilance States from Natural Social Behavior in Macaques
University of Goettingen / German Primate Center
Wanting What Is Needed: Degeneracy in the Causal Mechanisms of Homeostatic and Allostatic Motivation
NeuroAILab & AutocurriculaLab & LangTechAI
Keeping One’s Own Rhythm: Homeostatic Needs Shape Synchrony in Active Inference Collectives
The University of Osaka
Hierarchical behaviors in homeostatic optimal control
TU Berlin, BCCN Berlin, Einstein Center for Neuroscience Berlin
How Complex Tasks Become Valuable: A Normative Framework and an Algorithmic Implementation
University of Tübingen
Interoceptive Attention as Dynamic Homeostatic Prioritization in a Foraging Agent
University of Cape Town
Organizers
Workshop organizing team
Naoto Yoshida
Kyoto University
Ismael T. Freire
Sorbonne Université
Louis L’Haridon
ENSEA / CNRS
Henning Sprekeler
Technical University of Berlin
Lola Cañamero
CY Cergy Paris Université
Mehdi Khamassi
Sorbonne Université
Boris Gutkin
École Normale Supérieure
Contact
Questions and updates
For questions about the workshop, submissions or program, contact the organizing team.