Topic: neural competition

Humans and other animals must sometimes “think outside the box” to discover better strategies that solve old problems under novel conditions, but how the metaphorical “box” itself constrains learning is unknown. In operant tasks, the mechanisms behind learning are often framed just in terms of reinforcing success or punishing failure, and any predisposed strategies for guiding actions are ignored. In ethological behaviors though, animals often have instinctive predispositions in how they approach an evolutionarily adapted task but can also learn new ways to do better. Combining chemogenetics,