Strategies for navigating a dynamic world

Abstract

One of the most difficult problems for an adaptable agent is gauging how to behave in a nonstationary environment. When conditions are stable, an organism generally pursues a strategy known to provide the best outcome. However, when environmental conditions change, an organism abandons the current action plan and searches for a new best option. The most challenging aspect of this search—calculating the exact time point at which to change strategies—requires the brain to integrate past and present observations and evaluate whether they remain consistent with current environmental conditions. On page 1076 of this issue, Domenech et al. (1) report on the modeling of rare direct electrical recordings from the prefrontal cortices (PFCs) of a small group of human epilepsy patients as they flexibly negotiated a nonstationary environment.

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