Journal article
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 belief estimates and downward changes in moment-to-moment environmental richness, and was predictive of optimal performance on the task. The findings are consistent with a framework whereby autonomic function supports the learning demands of prey selection.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, 1.4MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.3758/s13415-020-00799-0
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer
- Journal:
- Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience More from this journal
- Volume:
- 20
- Issue:
- 4
- Pages:
- 730-745
- Publication date:
- 2020-05-27
- Acceptance date:
- 2020-05-03
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1531-135X
- ISSN:
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1530-7026
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1156019
- Local pid:
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pubs:1156019
- Deposit date:
-
2021-01-14
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Dundon et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2020
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2020. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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