Researchers discover the brain processes involved in foraging for food

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As they forage, animals, including humans and monkeys, continually make decisions about where to look for food and when to move between possible sources of sustenance.

“Responsive behavior is something we engage in every day when we go to the grocery store to get food, and we make choices based on the degree of reward each choice provides. It is a classic problem that affects every species on Earth,” said Valentin Dragoi, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice, professor of neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College and scientific director of the Methodist/Rice Center for Neural Systems Restoration.

In an article published in Nature Neuroscience, Dragoi and colleagues investigate the brain processes involved in food search.

“In this study, we describe the use of a novel integrated wireless system for recording brain activity in the frontal regions of their brains and for oculomotor and behavioral tracking. We investigate in real time how this ubiquitous task of foraging unfolds, something we naturally perform every day,” Dragoi said.

Macaques are a genus of monkeys native to Asia, North Africa and Southern Europe (Gibraltar). They usually eat fruits, seeds and other plant foods. “We study macaques,” Dragoi said, “because foraging is a natural behavior and the macaque brain is quite similar in organization and function to the human brain.”

Until now, it has been difficult to investigate the neural basis of foraging in naturalistic environments because previous approaches relied on restrained animals performing trial-based foraging tasks. Dragoi and his research partners allowed uninhibited macaques to freely interact with reward options while wirelessly recording neural activity in their prefrontal cortex.

“Animals decided when and where to forage depending on whether their predictions about reward were met or violated. The predictions were not based solely on a history of rewards, but also on the insight that waiting longer increases the chance of reward,” Dragoi said.

The results indicate that foraging strategies are based on a cortical model of reward dynamics as animals freely explore their environment.

“We have learned that we can predict choices even in complex situations by simply reading the responses of dozens of neurons in the frontal lobe. This could potentially move towards prosthetic devices to influence or bias choice, even non-invasively. More fundamentally, it allows us to understand how the brain works when it engages in these natural behaviors,” said Dragoi.

Next, the Dragoi lab will combine foraging in a social context and simultaneously record two animals as they work together to find food as a reward. This is a huge technical challenge, but Dragoi believes he and his research partners are close to achieving these goals. This may enable a solution to the challenge of cortical implants to help patients with brain disorders and enable their behavioral decisions.

Reference: Shahidi N, Franch M, Parajuli A, et al. Population coding of strategic variables during foraging in freely moving macaques. Nat Neuroci. 2024;27(4):772-781. doi: 10.1038/s41593-024-01575-w

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