Sympathetic involvement in time-constrained sequential foraging.

ABSTRACT: Appraising sequential offers relative to an unknown future opportunity and a time cost requires an optimization policy that draws on a learned estimate of an environment's richness. Converging evidence points to a learning asymmetry, whereby estimates of this richness update with a bias toward integrating positive information. We replicate this bias in a sequential foraging (prey selection) task and probe associated activation within the sympathetic branch of the autonomic system, using trial-by-trial measures of simultaneously recorded cardiac autonomic physiology. We reveal a unique adaptive role for the sympathetic branch in learning. It was specifically associated with adaptation to a deteriorating environment: it correlated with both the rate of negative information integration in bel

SUBMITTER: Dundon NM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7651516 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature