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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2020.02.21.954230

Vicarious trial-and-error is enhanced during deliberation in human virtual navigation in a translational neuroeconomic task

Huynh, T.·Alstatt, K.·Abram, S. V.·Schmitzer-Torbert, N.
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Abstract

Foraging tasks can provide valuable insights into decision-making, as animals choose how to allocate limited resources (such as time). In the "Restaurant Row" task, rodents move between several sites to obtain food rewards available after a variable delay, while in a translational version (the "Web-Surf") lacking the navigation component, humans are offered short videos. Both tasks have provided novel insights into decision-making and have been applied to addiction vulnerability and the impact of drug exposure on decision-making. We tested new tasks (the "Movie Row" and "Candy Row") which use virtual navigation to determine if the behavioral correlates of human decision-making are more broadly similar to those of rodents, and explored the relationship of task performance to smoking and obesity. Humans navigated a virtual maze presented on standard computers to obtain rewards (either short videos or candy) available after a variable delay. Behavior on the tasks replicated previous results for the Restaurant Row and Web-Surf. In conditions promoting deliberation, decision latency was elevated along with measures of vicarious trial-and-error (VTE), supporting VTE as a shared behavioral index of deliberation across species. Smoking status was not well-related to performance, while high BMI (> 25) individuals showed reduced sensitivity to a sunk-costs measure and stronger sensitivity to offer value for offers below the preferred delay. These data support the Movie and Candy Row as translational tools to study decision-making during foraging in humans, providing convergent results with a rodent navigation task and demonstrating the potential to provide novel insights relevant to public health.

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Huynh, T., Alstatt, K., Abram, S. V., Schmitzer-Torbert, N.. 2020-03-05. Vicarious trial-and-error is enhanced during deliberation in human virtual navigation in a translational neuroeconomic task. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.21.954230

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