Tracking subjects' strategies in behavioural choice experiments at trial resolution
- University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
- Atlantic Technological University, Ireland
- University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Abstract
Investigating how, when, and what subjects learn during decision-making tasks requires tracking their choice strategies on a trial-by-trial basis. Here we present a simple but effective probabilistic approach to tracking choice strategies at trial resolution using Bayesian evidence accumulation. We show this approach identifies both successful learning and the exploratory strategies used in decision tasks performed by humans, non-human primates, rats, and synthetic agents. Both when subjects learn and when rules change the exploratory strategies of win-stay and lose-shift, often considered complementary, are consistently used independently. Indeed, we find the use of lose-shift is strong evidence that subjects have latently learnt the salient features of a new rewarded rule. Our approach can be extended to any discrete choice strategy, and its low computational cost is ideally suited for real-time analysis and closed-loop control.
Data availability
Source data from the rat Y-maze task data are available from crcns.org at http://dx.doi.org/10.6080/K0KH0KH5. Source data from the rat lever-press task (32 rats), the human gain/loss task (20 participants) and the primate stimulus-to-action task (one session) are available from the Nottingham Research Data Management Service at http://doi.org/10.17639/nott.7274.Processed data and analysis code to replicate all figures are available in our GitHub repository https://github.com/Humphries-Lab/Bayesian_strategy_analysis_Paper. Our copies of the source data for the Y-maze task, lever-press task, gain/loss task, and stimulus-to-action task are also freely available from the same repository.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Medical Research Council (MR/J008648/1)
- Mark D Humphries
Medical Research Council (MR/P005659/1)
- Mark D Humphries
Medical Research Council (MR/S025944/1)
- Mark D Humphries
Medical Research Council (MR/K005480/1)
- Mark Buckley
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/T00598X/1)
- Mark Buckley
- Mark D Humphries
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/M008770/1)
- Rebecca M Hock
- Paula M Moran
- Tobias Bast
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Alicia Izquierdo, University of California, Los Angeles, United States
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Rat - lever-press task: All experimental procedures were conducted in accordance with the requirements of the United Kingdom (UK) Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, approved by the University of Nottingham's Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Board (AWERB) and run under the authority of Home Office project license 30/3357.Non-human primate task: All animal training and experimental procedures were performed in accordance with the guidelines of the UK Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act of 1986, licensed by the UK Home Office, and approved by Oxford University's Committee on Animal Care and Ethical Review.
Human subjects: The human gain/loss task study was approved by Research Ethics Committee (Stanmore London REC 17/LO/0577). All participants were read a participation information leaflet and undertook informed consent.
Version history
- Preprint posted: August 31, 2022 (view preprint)
- Received: January 29, 2023
- Accepted: February 23, 2024
- Accepted Manuscript published: March 1, 2024 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: March 22, 2024 (version 2)
Copyright
© 2024, Maggi et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 1,131
- views
-
- 175
- downloads
-
- 1
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Tracking subjects' strategies in behavioural choice experiments at trial resolution
eLife 13:e86491.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.86491
Further reading
-
- Neuroscience
Natural behaviors have redundancy, which implies that humans and animals can achieve their goals with different strategies. Given only observations of behavior, is it possible to infer the control objective that the subject is employing? This challenge is particularly acute in animal behavior because we cannot ask or instruct the subject to use a particular strategy. This study presents a three-pronged approach to infer an animal’s control objective from behavior. First, both humans and monkeys performed a virtual balancing task for which different control strategies could be utilized. Under matched experimental conditions, corresponding behaviors were observed in humans and monkeys. Second, a generative model was developed that represented two main control objectives to achieve the task goal. Model simulations were used to identify aspects of behavior that could distinguish which control objective was being used. Third, these behavioral signatures allowed us to infer the control objective used by human subjects who had been instructed to use one control objective or the other. Based on this validation, we could then infer objectives from animal subjects. Being able to positively identify a subject’s control objective from observed behavior can provide a powerful tool to neurophysiologists as they seek the neural mechanisms of sensorimotor coordination.
-
- Neuroscience
The retina consumes massive amounts of energy, yet its metabolism and substrate exploitation remain poorly understood. Here, we used a murine explant model to manipulate retinal energy metabolism under entirely controlled conditions and utilised 1H-NMR spectroscopy-based metabolomics, in situ enzyme detection, and cell viability readouts to uncover the pathways of retinal energy production. Our experimental manipulations resulted in varying degrees of photoreceptor degeneration, while the inner retina and retinal pigment epithelium were essentially unaffected. This selective vulnerability of photoreceptors suggested very specific adaptations in their energy metabolism. Rod photoreceptors were found to rely strongly on oxidative phosphorylation, but only mildly on glycolysis. Conversely, cone photoreceptors were dependent on glycolysis but insensitive to electron transport chain decoupling. Importantly, photoreceptors appeared to uncouple glycolytic and Krebs-cycle metabolism via three different pathways: (1) the mini-Krebs-cycle, fuelled by glutamine and branched chain amino acids, generating N-acetylaspartate; (2) the alanine-generating Cahill-cycle; (3) the lactate-releasing Cori-cycle. Moreover, the metabolomics data indicated a shuttling of taurine and hypotaurine between the retinal pigment epithelium and photoreceptors, likely resulting in an additional net transfer of reducing power to photoreceptors. These findings expand our understanding of retinal physiology and pathology and shed new light on neuronal energy homeostasis and the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases.
