Bifurcation Analysis of a Reaction–Diffusion System with a Cognitive Map Memory Kernel

This paper investigates a single species reaction–diffusion system incorporating a spatiotemporal delay memory kernel, which models the cognitive map of animals, under Neumann boundary conditions. The model can be used to describe the process in which individuals are influenced by historical information during spatial diffusion. An equivalent system construction method with auxiliary variables is introduced to transform the original system into a delay-free coupled reaction–diffusion equations. By employing Fourier modal decomposition and eigenvalue analysis, we conduct stability and bifurcation analysis for both the exponentially decaying weak kernel and the peak-type strong kernel, obtaining explicit expressions for the steady state and Hopf bifurcation points. Compared with the model in which the memory term of the continuous-time integral kernel utilizes its own population density, our model exhibits Hopf bifurcations and steady state bifurcations even under a weak kernel because of the introduction of a dynamic cognitive map. This implies that a dynamic cognitive map introduces sufficient flexibility to generate both steady state bifurcations and Hopf bifurcations across a broader range of temporal kernels. Numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the influence of stable, steady state and Hopf bifurcation regions on the spatiotemporal distribution of solutions.