Journal article
A one-shot shift from explore to exploit in monkey prefrontal cortex
- Abstract:
- Much animal learning is slow, with cumulative changes in behavior driven by reward prediction errors. When the abstract structure of a problem is known, however, both animals and formal learning models can rapidly attach new items to their roles within this structure, sometimes in a single trial. Frontal cortex is likely to play a key role in this process. To examine information seeking and use in a known problem structure, we trained monkeys in an explore/exploit task, requiring the animal first to test objects for their association with reward, then, once rewarded objects were found, to re-select them on further trials for further rewards. Many cells in the frontal cortex showed an explore/exploit preference aligned with the one-shot learning in the monkeys’ behavior: the population switched from an explore state to an exploit state after a single trial of learning, but partially maintained the explore state if an error indicated that learning had failed. Binary switch from explore to exploit was not explained by continuous changes linked to expectancy or prediction error. Explore/exploit preferences were independent for two stages of the trial, object selection and receipt of feedback. Within an established task structure, frontal activity may control the separate processes of explore and exploit, switching in one trial between the two.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Files:
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(Preview, Version of record, 2.8MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1338-21.2021
Authors
- Publisher:
- Society for Neuroscience
- Journal:
- Journal of Neuroscience More from this journal
- Volume:
- 42
- Issue:
- 2
- Pages:
- 276-287
- Publication date:
- 2021-11-15
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-10-07
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1529-2401
- ISSN:
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0270-6474
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1207427
- Local pid:
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pubs:1207427
- Deposit date:
-
2021-11-04
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Achterberg et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- Copyright © 2021 Achterberg et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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