(a) The potential landscape of the decision-making network with varying inputs and pathways. For the purpose of clear visualization, here we use I_1,tot and I_2,tot as x- and y-axis coordinates, which are equivalent to S₁ and S₂ for showing the positions of attractors. The pink lines indicate the paths of decision making from undecided state c to decided states a and b. The red dotted lines represent the paths from the two decided states back to the undecided state c. We should notice that once the external inputs are not presented, the system does not return to the rest state following the same path of the decision-making process. (b) The potential landscape of the decision-making network with faster varying input. The values of the parameters in Fig. 2 are a = 270, b = 108, c′ = 0, and D = 1.0 × 10⁻⁶.