Checking behavior in rhesus monkeys is related to anxiety and frontal activity

Bosc, Marion; Bioulac, Bernard; Langbour, Nicolas; Nguyen, Tho Haï; Goillandeau, Michel; Dehay, Benjamin; Burbaud, Pierre; Michelet, Thomas

doi:10.1038/srep45267

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…Indeed, participants increased their checking frequency for more difficult stimuli, and thus more uncertain settings 38 . This result is in line with past findings in non-human primates 4 , 39 which demonstrate that checking adaptively aims at decreasing one’s uncertainty about future decisions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Joint contributions of metacognition and self-beliefs to uncertainty-guided checking behavior

Baptista

Maheu

Mallet

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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Checking behavior is a natural and adaptive strategy for resolving uncertainty in everyday situations. Here, we aimed at investigating the psychological drivers of checking and its regulation by uncertainty, in non-clinical participants and controlled experimental settings. We found that the sensitivity of participants’ explicit confidence judgments to actual performance (explicit metacognition) predicted the extent to which their checking strategy was regulated by uncertainty. Yet, a more implicit measure of metacognition (derived from asking participants to opt between trials) did not contribute to the regulation of checking behavior. Meanwhile, how participants scaled on questionnaires eliciting self-beliefs such as self-confidence and self-reported obsessive–compulsive symptoms also predicted participants’ uncertainty-guided checking tendencies. Altogether, these findings demonstrate that checking behavior is likely the outcome of a core explicit metacognitive process operating at the scale of single decisions, while remaining influenced by general self-beliefs. Our findings are thus consistent with two mechanisms (micro vs. macro) through which this otherwise adaptive behavior could go awry in certain psychiatric disorders such as obsessive–compulsive disorder.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Joint contributions of metacognition and self-beliefs to uncertainty-guided checking behavior

Baptista

Maheu

Mallet

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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“…Our results provide evidence that human checking behavior is the outcome of an uncertainty-evaluation, or metacognitive, process. Indeed, participants increased their checking frequency for more difficult stimuli, and thus more uncertain settings (Rollwage et al 2020) This result is in line with past findings in non-human primates (Stoll, Fontanier, and Procyk 2016;Bosc et al 2017) which demonstrate that checking aims at decreasing one's uncertainty about future decisions.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Joint contributions of metacognition and self-beliefs to uncertainty-guided checking behavior

Baptista¹,

Maheu²,

Luc³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Checking behavior is a natural and adaptive strategy in uncertain situations. Here, we aimed at investigating the psychological drivers of checking and its regulation by uncertainty, in non-clinical participants and controlled experimental settings. We found that the sensitivity of participants’ explicit confidence judgments to actual performance (explicit metacognition) predicted the extent to which their checking strategy was regulated by uncertainty. This was, however, not the case of how participants used confidence to guide subsequent decision-making (implicit metacognition). Meanwhile, how participants scaled on questionnaires eliciting self-beliefs such as self-confidence and self-reported obsessive-compulsive symptoms also predicted participants’ uncertainty-guided checking tendencies. Altogether, these findings demonstrate that checking is likely the outcome of a core metacognitive process operating at the scale of single decisions, while remaining influenced by general self-beliefs. Our findings thus propose two mechanisms (micro vs. macro) through which this otherwise rational behavior could go awry in certain psychiatric disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder.

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“…We know that monkeys can seek information before committing to a choice or to increase confidence about their decision [ 38 – 40 ]. However, here, we showed that monkeys could identify situations in which a strategic exploratory choice would lead to gaining information that would be beneficial for future decisions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural responses in macaque prefrontal cortex are linked to strategic exploration

et al. 2023

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Humans have been shown to strategically explore. They can identify situations in which gathering information about distant and uncertain options is beneficial for the future. Because primates rely on scarce resources when they forage, they are also thought to strategically explore, but whether they use the same strategies as humans and the neural bases of strategic exploration in monkeys are largely unknown. We designed a sequential choice task to investigate whether monkeys mobilize strategic exploration based on whether that information can improve subsequent choice, but also to ask the novel question about whether monkeys adjust their exploratory choices based on the contingency between choice and information, by sometimes providing the counterfactual feedback about the unchosen option. We show that monkeys decreased their reliance on expected value when exploration could be beneficial, but this was not mediated by changes in the effect of uncertainty on choices. We found strategic exploratory signals in anterior and mid-cingulate cortex (ACC/MCC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). This network was most active when a low value option was chosen, which suggests a role in counteracting expected value signals, when exploration away from value should to be considered. Such strategic exploration was abolished when the counterfactual feedback was available. Learning from counterfactual outcome was associated with the recruitment of a different circuit centered on the medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), where we showed that monkeys represent chosen and unchosen reward prediction errors. Overall, our study shows how ACC/MCC-dlPFC and OFC circuits together could support exploitation of available information to the fullest and drive behavior towards finding more information through exploration when it is beneficial.

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Checking behavior in rhesus monkeys is related to anxiety and frontal activity

Cited by 11 publications

References 63 publications

Joint contributions of metacognition and self-beliefs to uncertainty-guided checking behavior

Joint contributions of metacognition and self-beliefs to uncertainty-guided checking behavior

Joint contributions of metacognition and self-beliefs to uncertainty-guided checking behavior

Neural responses in macaque prefrontal cortex are linked to strategic exploration

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