Mice exhibit stochastic and efficient action switching during probabilistic decision making.

ABSTRACT: In probabilistic and nonstationary environments, individuals must use internal and external cues to flexibly make decisions that lead to desirable outcomes. To gain insight into the process by which animals choose between actions, we trained mice in a task with time-varying reward probabilities. In our implementation of such a two-armed bandit task, thirsty mice use information about recent action and action–outcome histories to choose between two ports that deliver water probabilistically. Here we comprehensively modeled choice behavior in this task, including the trial-to-trial changes in port selection, i.e., action switching behavior. We find that mouse behavior is, at times, deterministic and, at others, apparently stochastic. The behavior deviates from that of a theoretically optimal

SUBMITTER: Beron CC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9169659 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature