Pallidal neuromodulation of the explore/exploit trade-off in decision-making
- Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany
- University of Dundee, United Kingdom
Abstract
Every decision that we make involves a conflict between exploiting our current knowledge of an action's value or exploring alternative courses of action that might lead to a better, or worse outcome. The sub-cortical nuclei that make up the basal ganglia have been proposed as a neural circuit that may contribute to resolving this explore-exploit 'dilemma'. To test this hypothesis, we examined the effects of neuromodulating the basal ganglia's output nucleus, the globus pallidus interna, in patients who had undergone deep brain stimulation (DBS) for isolated dystonia. Neuromodulation enhanced the number of exploratory choices to the lower value option in a 2-armed bandit probabilistic reversal-learning task. Enhanced exploration was explained by a reduction in the rate of evidence accumulation (drift rate) in a reinforcement learning drift diffusion model. We estimated the functional connectivity profile between the stimulating DBS electrode and the rest of the brain using a normative functional connectome derived from heathy controls. Variation in the extent of neuromodulation induced exploration between patients was associated with functional connectivity from the stimulation electrode site to a distributed brain functional network. We conclude that the basal ganglia's output nucleus, the globus pallidus interna, can adaptively modify decision choice when faced with the dilemma to explore or exploit.
Data availability
Raw choice and reaction time data, computational model parameter estimates, simulated data and r-maps from connectivity analysis are available via the Open Science Framework https://osf.io/fs36g/
Article and author information
Author details
Ana Luisa de A. Marcelino
Funding
Chief Scientist Office
- Tom Gilbertson
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: The which was approved by the local ethics committee (Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, EA1/179/20).
Copyright
© 2023, de A. Marcelino 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.
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Pallidal neuromodulation of the explore/exploit trade-off in decision-making
eLife 12:e79642.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.79642
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