ArticleeLife2021
Human complex exploration strategies are enriched by noradrenaline-modulated heuristics.
Article in eLife, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 77 citations in OpenAlex.
- Acetylcholine and noradrenaline enhance foraging optimality in humans.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Trial
- Disentangling the roles of dopamine and noradrenaline in the exploration-exploitation tradeoff during human decision-making.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Trial
- Article
- Competing value signals impair reward-learning via dopaminergic mechanisms and increase exploration.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Competing cognitive pressures on human exploration in the absence of trade-off with exploitation.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Cortical Microstructural Variations Correlate With Individual Differences in Gamified Exploration-Exploitation Behaviours.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
- Different exploration strategies along the autism spectrum: diverging effects of autism diagnosis and autism traits.Molecular autism · 2025Article
- Novelty as a drive of human exploration in complex stochastic environments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Meta-Reinforcement Learning reconciles surprise, value, and control in the anterior cingulate cortex.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Review
- Computational Mechanisms of Information-Seeking in Anxiety.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
- Playful brains: a possible neurobiological pathway to cognitive health in aging.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2025Article
- Decrease in decision noise from adolescence into adulthood mediates an increase in more sophisticated choice behaviors and performance gain.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- A causal role of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in random exploration.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Toward a computational role for locus coeruleus/norepinephrine arousal systems.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2024Article
- Reviewing explore/exploit decision-making as a transdiagnostic target for psychosis, depression, and anxiety.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2024Review
- Surprising sounds influence risky decision making.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Testing the convergent validity, domain generality, and temporal stability of selected measures of people's tendency to explore.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Exploration-Exploitation Mechanisms in Recurrent Neural Networks and Human Learners in Restless Bandit Problems.Computational brain & behavior · 2024Article
- The explore/exploit trade-off: An ecologically valid and translational framework that can advance mechanistic understanding of eating disorders.The International journal of eating disorders · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
An exploration-exploitation trade-off, the arbitration between sampling a lesser-known against a known rich option, is thought to be solved using computationally demanding exploration algorithms. Given known limitations in human cognitive resources, we hypothesised the presence of additional cheaper strategies. We examined for such heuristics in choice behaviour where we show this involves a value-free random exploration, that ignores all prior knowledge, and a novelty exploration that targets novel options alone. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled drug study, assessing contributions of dopamine (400 mg amisulpride) and noradrenaline (40 mg propranolol), we show that value-free random exploration is attenuated under the influence of propranolol, but not under amisulpride. Our findings demonstrate that humans deploy distinct computationally cheap exploration strategies and that value-free random exploration is under noradrenergic control.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.