Trial-to-trial variability in the execution of movements and motor skills is ubiquitous and
widely considered to be the unwanted consequence of a noisy nervous system. However …

Advances in artificial intelligence are stimulating interest in neuroscience. However, most
attention is given to discrete tasks with simple action spaces, such as board games and …

All adaptive organisms face the fundamental tradeoff between pursuing a known reward
(exploitation) and sampling lesser-known options in search of something better …

Individual differences in motor learning ability are widely acknowledged, yet little is known
about the factors that underlie them. Here we explore whether movement-to-movement …

Chunking allows the brain to efficiently organize memories and actions. Although basal
ganglia circuits have been implicated in action chunking, little is known about how individual …

Rapid and reversible manipulations of neural activity in behaving animals are transforming
our understanding of brain function. An important assumption underlying much of this work …

The performance of an action relies on the initiation and execution of appropriate movement
sequences. Two basal ganglia pathways have been classically hypothesized to regulate this …

Scientists in many different fields have been attracted to the study of habits because of the
power habits have over behavior and because they invoke a dichotomy between the …

The public pays large sums of money to watch skilled motor performance. Notably, however,
in recent decades motor skill learning (performance improvement beyond baseline levels) …

Behavioral choices that ignore prior experience promote exploration and unpredictability but
are seemingly at odds with the brain's tendency to use experience to optimize behavioral …