Topic: cumulative reward

Although animals including humans are near-optimal foragers (Charnov 1974), interindividual differences in foraging strategies exist and have been associated with differences in internal states like stress and anxiety (Yonce et al.2021, Lenow et al., 2017). However, the underlying neural mechanisms relating anxiety with suboptimal foraging are yet unclear. We hypothesized that trait anxiety may impact stress neuromodulators like cortisol and norepinephrine which may in turn affect foraging.Method:To this end, we collected data from 55 participants who played the virtual patch foraging game (Ba