Human decision making is inherently variable. While this variability is often seen as a sign of suboptimality in human behavior, recent work suggests that randomness can actually be adaptive. An example arises when we must choose between exploring unknown options or exploiting options we know well. A little randomness in these 'explore-exploit' decisions is remarkably effective as it encourages us to explore options we might otherwise ignore. Moreover, people actually use such 'random exploration' in practice, increasing their behavioral variability when it is more valuable to explore. Despite this progress, the nature of adaptive 'decision noise' for exploration is unknown -specifically whether it is generated internally, from stochastic processes in the brain, or externally, from stochastic stimuli in the world. Here we show that, while both internal and external noise drive variability in behavior, the noise driving random exploration is predominantly internal. This suggests that random exploration depends on adaptive noise processes in the brain which are subject to cognitive control.
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