Mueller Dana, Giglio Erin, Chen Cathy S, Holm Aspen, Ebitz R Becket, Grissom Nicola M
Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN 55455.
Department of Neurosciences, Université de Montréal, Quebec, Canada.
bioRxiv. 2024 Oct 23:2024.10.23.619903. doi: 10.1101/2024.10.23.619903.
The explore/exploit tradeoff is a fundamental property of choice selection during reward-guided decision making. In perceptual decision making, higher certainty decisions are more motorically precise, even when the decision does not require motor accuracy. However, while we can parametrically control uncertainty in perceptual tasks, we do not know what variables - if any - shape motor precision and reflect subjective certainty during reward-guided decision making. Touchscreens are increasingly used across species to measure choice, but provide no tactile feedback on whether an action is precise or not, and therefore provide a valuable opportunity to determine whether actions differ in precision due to explore/exploit state, reward, or individual variables. We find all three of these factors exert independent drives towards increased precision. During exploit states, successive touches to the same choice are closer together than those made in an explore state, consistent with exploit states reflecting higher certainty and/or motor stereotypy in responding. However, exploit decisions might be expected to be rewarded more frequently than explore decisions. We find that exploit choice precision is increased independently of a separate increase in precision due to immediate past reward, suggesting multiple mechanisms regulating choice precision. Finally, we see evidence that male mice in general are less precise in their interactions with the touchscreen than females, even when exploiting a choice. These results suggest that as exploit behavior emerges in reward-guided decision making, individuals become more motorically precise reflecting increased certainty, even when decision choice does not require additional motor accuracy, but this is influenced by individual differences and prior reward. These data uncover the hidden potential for touchscreen tasks in any species to uncover the latent neural states that unite cognition and movement.
在奖励引导的决策过程中，探索/利用权衡是选择过程的一个基本特性。在感知决策中，确定性更高的决策在运动上更加精确，即使该决策并不要求运动准确性。然而，虽然我们可以在感知任务中参数化地控制不确定性，但我们不知道在奖励引导的决策过程中，哪些变量（如果有的话）会影响运动精度并反映主观确定性。触摸屏在跨物种研究中越来越多地被用于测量选择，但对于一个动作是否精确不提供触觉反馈，因此提供了一个宝贵的机会来确定动作在精度上的差异是否归因于探索/利用状态、奖励或个体变量。我们发现这三个因素都对提高精度有独立的驱动作用。在利用状态下，对同一选择的连续触摸比在探索状态下的触摸更接近，这与利用状态反映出更高的确定性和/或反应中的运动刻板性是一致的。然而，人们可能会预期利用决策比探索决策得到更频繁的奖励。我们发现，利用选择的精度提高与由于近期奖励导致的精度单独提高无关，这表明存在多种调节选择精度的机制。最后，我们有证据表明，一般来说，雄性小鼠在与触摸屏互动时比雌性小鼠的精度更低，即使在利用一个选择时也是如此。这些结果表明，在奖励引导的决策中出现利用行为时，个体在运动上会变得更加精确，这反映了确定性的增加，即使决策选择不需要额外的运动准确性，但这会受到个体差异和先前奖励的影响。这些数据揭示了触摸屏任务在任何物种中揭示将认知和运动联系起来的潜在神经状态的隐藏潜力。
