Topic: instrumental reward system

Across species, survival depends on harvesting essential rewards such as food in the face of potential, occasionally catastrophic, dangers (such as serious injuries). This presents the challenge as to how to remain as efficient as possible when it comes to reward acquisition, whilst avoiding accrual of damage, especially during early exploration of new environments. This safety-efficiency dilemma is a special case of the exploration-exploitation dilemma, which typically collapses punishment and reward into a single scalar signal, whereby early losses can be overcome by later gains. However, th