Topic: dynamic foraging

Foraging animals make decisions based on cues that are unreliable predictors of reward. In these situations, the ratio with which an animal divides its choices between cues matches the ratios with which they provide reward. This operant matching strategy is widespread amongst vertebrates. Performing operant matching requires animals to possess a valuation of available cues, and to update them when cue-reward relationships change. While neurons that represent value information have been found in several brain regions, less is known about how value is updated. Theoretical studies suggest that th

Multiple brain regions are involved in integrating reward to drive action selection, with rich representations of reward history in the striatum, retrosplenial cortex, and frontal areas. A major challenge in dissecting the circuits that govern reward-guided behavior is the existence of multiple strategies for reward maximization. For instance, in dynamic environments, mice can engage in both model-free behavior, where they update action values from trial to trial, and inference-based learning, where they use an internal model to infer the current world state. These two modes are challenging to