Functional sophistication in human escape.

ABSTRACT: Animals including humans must cope with immediate threat and make rapid decisions to survive. Without much leeway for cognitive or motor errors, this poses a formidable computational problem. Utilizing fully immersive virtual reality with 13 natural threats, we examined escape decisions in N = 59 humans. We show that escape goals are dynamically updated according to environmental changes. The decision whether and when to escape depends on time-to-impact, threat identity and predicted trajectory, and stable personal characteristics. Its implementation appears to integrate secondary goals such as behavioral affordances. Perturbance experiments show that the underlying decision algorithm exhibits planning properties and can integrate novel actions. In contrast, rapid information-seeking and f

SUBMITTER: Sporrer JK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10654542 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature