Anxiety-Like Behavioural Inhibition Is Normative under Environmental Threat-Reward Correlations
Fig 1
Two scenarios for a rodent conflict test.
An animal is rewarded with food pellets for approaching a pellet dispenser, but there is a possibility of being punished by an electric shock. In scenario 1, the probability of threat is constant over time (red line) while the probability increases over time that the food pellet is withdrawn (green line). Expected utility, or negative expected loss, is maximal if the animal approaches the dispenser as quickly as biologically possible. In scenario 2, the threat probability is initially very high and decreases afterwards. This reflects naturally occurring temporal relations between predatory threat and reward. In this scenario, it is cost-minimising to move somewhat later (see Model and Methods for proofs, and S1 Text for the choice of parameters in these simulations).