2023-11-21 21:47:57
When you go to your favorite restaurant, do you always get the same thing or do you like to try new flavors?
On the one hand, the favorite food guarantees that you will be content, but you will not learn anything new. On the other hand, choosing an original dish provides no guarantee of your taste satisfaction, but allows you to know if you like this different recipe.
This is an example of the exploration-exploitation dilemma, a behavioral dilemma that arises whenever our desire for information conflicts with our need for reward. A dichotomy that is the basis of problem solving and decision making.
So, in order to make better decisions, would it be better to rely on achievements that ensure a gain or to innovate to make discoveries? In short, exploit actions that have been rewarding in the past or, rather, explore actions that could be even better?
“There is an intrinsic trade-off between exploration and exploitation, a balance between the two that varies over the course of life,” says Becket Ebitz, researcher and professor in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Montreal.
One continuous
Becket Ebitz
Credit: Courtesy
In literature paperBecket Ebitz highlighted that certain forms of exploration evolve during development: they can be more frequent in early childhood and decrease with age.
“My colleagues who work on development observe that toddlers are particularly motivated to explore their environment and be interested in everything,” he says. They often try new things, even if they are not very effective or wise. As we get older, we seem to abandon this state of exploration and move deeper into exploiting the information we already have.”
According to the researcher, this variation would be very useful for learning and also fluctuates depending on the context. For example, in a article recently, the professor explains that, during the COVID-19 pandemic, health care workers have seen their ability to explore compromised.
“When we’re stressed – when the world around us is just too unpredictable and challenging – we don’t have enough energy left to discover and learn. We just use the information we have,” emphasizes Becket Ebitz.
This fluctuation also brings to the fore the stability-plasticity dilemma, that is, the fact that the brain is both plastic enough to learn new things and stable enough to remember them.
“For the moment, we believe that we do not have to be both plastic and stable,” says Becket Ebitz. On the contrary, we alternate over time between plasticity and stability. There would also be individual differences in this alternation process, which could explain why people learn better in certain environments than in others.
A visible alternation
In study recently, Becket Ebitz and his team noted that a dilation of the pupil – a physiological sign of excitement, itself governed by the autonomic nervous system – would announce the start of the exploration phase and the neuronal activity that occurs there. is associated.
Their results show that mechanisms linked to pupil dilation lead the prefrontal cortex towards a critical tipping point where exploratory decisions then become possible.
“This assumes that the state of excitement, therefore the way in which we are stimulated, can explain how close we are to the threshold of discovery. In general, when we feel excited or stressed, we try to stabilize our body state to return to a neutral state. But this breakthrough could mean that letting yourself be carried away by your excitement could lead to new perspectives,” says the researcher.
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