Midbrain dopamine signals are widely thought to report reward prediction errors that drive
learning in the basal ganglia. However, dopamine has also been implicated in various …

Highlights•Humans use uncertainty-based algorithms to balance exploration and
exploitation.•Humans utilize structure in the state space to make exploration more …

The dilemma between information gathering (exploration) and reward seeking (exploitation)
is a fundamental problem for reinforcement learning agents. How humans resolve this …

Successful behaviour depends on the right balance between maximising reward and
soliciting information about the world. Here, we show how different types of information-gain …

From foraging for food to learning complex games, many aspects of human behaviour can
be framed as a search problem with a vast space of possible actions. Under finite search …

Highlights•Curiosity is a powerful motivator of information-seeking behavior.•People risk
negative experiences to satisfy curiosity.•Empirical evidence reveals parallels between …

How does time pressure influence exploration and decision-making? We investigated this
question with several four-armed bandit tasks manipulating (within subjects) expected …

Generalization, defined as applying limited experiences to novel situations, represents a
cornerstone of human intelligence. Our review traces the evolution and continuity of …

Are young children just random explorers who learn serendipitously? Or are even young
children guided by uncertainty‐directed sampling, seeking to explore in a systematic …

Adaptive information seeking is critical for goal-directed behavior. Growing evidence
suggests the importance of intrinsic motives such as curiosity or need for novelty, mediated …