Feedback processing is enhanced following exploration in continuous environments.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Behavioral Economics

Background:

• Decision-making research often uses discrete tasks, limiting generalizability to real-world continuous environments like foraging.
• The explore-exploit trade-off is crucial for foraging but its neural underpinnings in continuous settings remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the neural mechanisms of the explore-exploit trade-off in a continuous decision-making task.
• To determine if neural signals associated with exploration in discrete tasks are also present in continuous environments.

Main Methods:

• Electroencephalography (EEG) recorded neural activity during a continuous 'gold digging' task.
• A computational model classified responses as exploitation (based on past rewards) or exploration.
• Participants were cued about single or multiple reward patches to manipulate exploration/exploitation demands.

Main Results:

• Participants adapted their strategy, exploring more in multi-patch environments and less in single-patch environments.
• An enhanced feedback-locked P300 signal, linked to exploration, was observed, suggesting a general neural system for the explore-exploit trade-off.
• Exploration in multi-patch environments correlated with enhanced late positive potentials, indicating motivational involvement.

Conclusions:

• The study provides evidence for a general neural system managing the explore-exploit trade-off, extending findings from discrete to continuous decision-making.
• Motivational processes play a role in exploration within continuous environments.