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A GLOBAL DOPAMINERGIC LEARNING RATE ENABLES ADAPTIVE FORAGING ACROSS MANY OPTIONS
Laura Grimaand 4 co-authors
HHMI Janelia
FENS Forum 2026 (2026)
Barcelona, Spain
Board PS02-07PM-083
Presentation
Date TBA
Board: PS02-07PM-083
Event Information
Poster Board
PS02-07PM-083
Poster
View posterAbstract
In natural environments, animals must efficiently allocate their choices across multiple concurrently available resources when foraging, a complex decision-making process not fully captured by existing models. To understand how rodents learn to navigate this challenge we developed a novel paradigm in which untrained, water-restricted mice were free to sample from six options rewarded at a range of deterministic intervals and positioned around the walls of a large (∼2m) arena. Mice exhibited rapid learning, matching their choices to integrated reward ratios across six options within the first session. A reinforcement learning model with separate states for staying or leaving an option and a dynamic, global learning rate was able to accurately reproduce mouse learning and decision-making. Fiber photometry recordings revealed that dopamine in the nucleus accumbens core (NAcC), but not dorsomedial striatum (DMS), more closely reflected the global learning rate than local error-based updating. Altogether, our results provide insight into the neural substrate of a learning algorithm that allows mice to rapidly exploit multiple options when foraging in large spatial environments.
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