Motivational Brain Circuits for Behavioural Flexibility

Humans and animals exhibit remarkable flexibility in adapting their goals in response to changing needs and environmental conditions. Choosing between continuing to exploit a current option and exploring new options is a fundamental requirement in everyday life, shaping our acquired habits and knowledge. However, this flexibility to switch between exploitation and exploration is compromised in highly prevalent clinical conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Despite the significance of this issue, the mechanisms by which the brain controls and switches between exploratory and exploitative behavioural states remain poorly understood.
Previous studies on the brain mechanisms underlying explore/exploit decisions have primarily focused on the role of prefrontal cortical areas in modulating reward-seeking by monitoring and predicting changes in the environment. However, the drive to seek novel information, independent of immediate reward, can also fuel exploration. My previous research has identified subcortical brain circuits that selectively regulate information-seeking, distinct from neural circuits crucial for immediate-reward seeking. Building on this, I hypothesize that the behavioural flexibility to choose between exploitation and exploration arises from interactions between brain networks that regulate these two motivations. Furthermore, using this framework, I aim to understand how internal physiological conditions, such as hunger and stress, modulate explore/exploit decisions—a challenging and not yet well-explored topic.
I will employ state-of-the-art circuit interrogation tools and quantitative behaviour analysis in mice to investigate how the brain switches between exploratory and exploitative states. Specifically, I will identify the distributed neural circuits mediating immediate-reward and information seeking, explore how their interaction contributes to...