Neural encoding of perceived patch value during competitive and hazardous virtual foraging.

ABSTRACT: Natural observations suggest that in safe environments, organisms avoid competition to maximize gain, while in hazardous environments the most effective survival strategy is to congregate with competition to reduce the likelihood of predatory attack. We probed the extent to which survival decisions in humans follow these patterns, and examined the factors that determined individual-level decision-making. In a virtual foraging task containing changing levels of competition in safe and hazardous patches with virtual predators, we demonstrate that human participants inversely select competition avoidant and risk diluting strategies depending on perceived patch value (PPV), a computation dependent on reward, threat, and competition. We formulate a mathematically grounded quantification of PPV

SUBMITTER: Silston B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8446065 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature