Abstract
People often make the difficult decision to try new options (exploration) and forego immediate rewards (exploitation). Novelty-seeking is an adaptive solution to this explore-exploit dilemma that has been studied using targeted recordings in monkeys, but our understanding of the neural computations supporting novelty-seeking in humans is limited. Here, we show homologous computations supporting novelty-seeking across humans and monkeys, and reveal a previously unidentified cortico-subcortical architecture mediating explore-exploit behavior in humans.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
Funding: The current human subjects work was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS; P30GM122734), and the animal work was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH; ZIA MH002929). JH’s effort while writing this manuscript was supported via NIGMS (P20GM109089).