Stress drives deliberative tendencies by influencing vicarious trial and error in decision making

Previous studies have reported the effects of stress on decision making. However, the wide range of findings make it difficult to identify the fundamental effects of stress on decision making and, therefore, how stress affects decision making remains unknown. To investigate the influence of stress on decision making, we employed "vicarious trial and error" (VTE), which refers to a rat's behavior of orienting the head toward options at a decision point. VTE is thought to reflect mental simulation for possible options preceding a decision. We examined effects of acute restraint stress on VTE in a T-maze choice task. VTE depended on learning and past reward outcomes. Acute restraint stress before rats ran the T-maze choice task induced VTE, especially in trials with low demand of VTE, and increased the number of head orientations and time spent during each VTE. On the other hand, stress did not affect task performance (probability of advantageous choice) and patterns of behavioral choice (win-stay lose-shift, exploration-exploitation). In addition, stress activated serotonergic and noradrenergic neurons in the dorsal raphe nucleus and locus coeruleus, which are modulators of impulsivity and attentional control in decision making. These results suggest that stress in decision making drives the VTE process, which may lead to deep consideration, over-thinking, and indecisiveness.