Neuroscience Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637.
Department of Neurobiology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637.
eNeuro. 2024 Sep 20;11(9). doi: 10.1523/ENEURO.0266-24.2024. Print 2024 Sep.
Learning to solve a new problem involves identifying the operating rules, which can be accelerated if known rules generalize in the new context. We ask how prior experience affects learning a new rule that is distinct from known rules. We examined how rats learned a new spatial navigation task after having previously learned tasks with different navigation rules. The new task differed from the previous tasks in spatial layout and navigation rule. We found that experience history did not impact overall performance. However, by examining navigation choice sequences in the new task, we found experience-dependent differences in exploration patterns during early stages of learning, as well as differences in the types of errors made during stable performance. The differences were consistent with the animals adopting experience-dependent memory strategies to discover and implement the new rule. Our results indicate prior experience shapes the strategies for solving novel problems, and the impact of prior experience remains persistent.
学习解决新问题涉及识别操作规则，如果已知规则在新环境中可以推广，则可以加速学习过程。我们研究了先前的经验如何影响学习新规则，这些新规则与已知规则不同。我们观察了大鼠在先前学习了具有不同导航规则的任务后，如何学习新的空间导航任务。新任务在空间布局和导航规则上与以前的任务不同。我们发现，经验历史并没有影响整体表现。然而，通过检查新任务中的导航选择序列，我们发现学习早期阶段的探索模式存在经验依赖性差异，以及在稳定表现期间犯的错误类型存在差异。这些差异与动物采用经验依赖性记忆策略来发现和实施新规则一致。我们的结果表明，先前的经验塑造了解决新问题的策略，并且先前经验的影响仍然持续存在。
