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Dissecting the neurocomputational bases of patch-switching

George Zacharopoulos Orcid Logo, Greg Maio, David E J Linden

Cerebral Cortex, Volume: 33, Issue: 12, Pages: 7930 - 7940

Swansea University Author: George Zacharopoulos Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.1093/cercor/bhad088

Abstract

The survival and well-being of humans require solving the patch-switching problem: we must decide when to stop collecting rewards in a current patch and travel somewhere else where gains may be higher. Previous studies suggested that frontal regions are underpinned by several processes in the contex...

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Published in: Cerebral Cortex
ISSN: 1047-3211 1460-2199
Published: Oxford University Press (OUP) 2023
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URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa62977
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last_indexed 2025-06-07T04:48:20Z
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spelling 2025-06-06T13:05:10.7423923 v2 62977 2023-03-18 Dissecting the neurocomputational bases of patch-switching 7abcfe5e6fd29d20e2c53eff9a4098d1 0000-0003-0574-866X George Zacharopoulos George Zacharopoulos true false 2023-03-18 PSYS The survival and well-being of humans require solving the patch-switching problem: we must decide when to stop collecting rewards in a current patch and travel somewhere else where gains may be higher. Previous studies suggested that frontal regions are underpinned by several processes in the context of foraging decisions such as tracking task difficulty, and/or the value of exploring the environment. To dissociate between these processes, participants completed an fMRI patch-switching learning task inspired by behavioral ecology. By analyzing >11,000 trials collected across 21 participants, we found that the activation in the cingulate cortex was closely related to several patch-switching-related variables including the decision to leave the current patch, the encounter of a new patch, the harvest value, and the relative forage value. Learning-induced changes in the patch-switching threshold were tracked by activity within frontoparietal regions including the superior frontal gyrus and angular gyrus. Our findings suggest that frontoparietal regions shape patch-switching learning apart from encoding classical non-learning foraging processes. These findings provide a novel neurobiological understanding of how learning emerges neurocomputationally shaping patch-switching behavior with implications in real-life choices such as job selection and pave the way for future studies to probe the causal role of these neurobiological mechanisms. Journal Article Cerebral Cortex 33 12 7930 7940 Oxford University Press (OUP) 1047-3211 1460-2199 patch-switching, fMRI, individual differences, learning 8 6 2023 2023-06-08 10.1093/cercor/bhad088 COLLEGE NANME Psychology School COLLEGE CODE PSYS Swansea University Another institution paid the OA fee 2025-06-06T13:05:10.7423923 2023-03-18T08:40:32.4797458 Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences School of Psychology George Zacharopoulos 0000-0003-0574-866X 1 Greg Maio 2 David E J Linden 3 62977__27203__097723e7ba91469dac251924159c2781.pdf 62977.pdf 2023-04-25T17:37:29.0840460 Output 1087546 application/pdf Version of Record true ©TheAuthor(s) 2023. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. true eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
title Dissecting the neurocomputational bases of patch-switching
spellingShingle Dissecting the neurocomputational bases of patch-switching
George Zacharopoulos
title_short Dissecting the neurocomputational bases of patch-switching
title_full Dissecting the neurocomputational bases of patch-switching
title_fullStr Dissecting the neurocomputational bases of patch-switching
title_full_unstemmed Dissecting the neurocomputational bases of patch-switching
title_sort Dissecting the neurocomputational bases of patch-switching
author_id_str_mv 7abcfe5e6fd29d20e2c53eff9a4098d1
author_id_fullname_str_mv 7abcfe5e6fd29d20e2c53eff9a4098d1_***_George Zacharopoulos
author George Zacharopoulos
author2 George Zacharopoulos
Greg Maio
David E J Linden
format Journal article
container_title Cerebral Cortex
container_volume 33
container_issue 12
container_start_page 7930
publishDate 2023
institution Swansea University
issn 1047-3211
1460-2199
doi_str_mv 10.1093/cercor/bhad088
publisher Oxford University Press (OUP)
college_str Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences
hierarchytype
hierarchy_top_id facultyofmedicinehealthandlifesciences
hierarchy_top_title Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences
hierarchy_parent_id facultyofmedicinehealthandlifesciences
hierarchy_parent_title Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences
department_str School of Psychology{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences{{{_:::_}}}School of Psychology
document_store_str 1
active_str 0
description The survival and well-being of humans require solving the patch-switching problem: we must decide when to stop collecting rewards in a current patch and travel somewhere else where gains may be higher. Previous studies suggested that frontal regions are underpinned by several processes in the context of foraging decisions such as tracking task difficulty, and/or the value of exploring the environment. To dissociate between these processes, participants completed an fMRI patch-switching learning task inspired by behavioral ecology. By analyzing >11,000 trials collected across 21 participants, we found that the activation in the cingulate cortex was closely related to several patch-switching-related variables including the decision to leave the current patch, the encounter of a new patch, the harvest value, and the relative forage value. Learning-induced changes in the patch-switching threshold were tracked by activity within frontoparietal regions including the superior frontal gyrus and angular gyrus. Our findings suggest that frontoparietal regions shape patch-switching learning apart from encoding classical non-learning foraging processes. These findings provide a novel neurobiological understanding of how learning emerges neurocomputationally shaping patch-switching behavior with implications in real-life choices such as job selection and pave the way for future studies to probe the causal role of these neurobiological mechanisms.
published_date 2023-06-08T05:10:29Z
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