A Novel Foraging Task Reveals Cognitive and Motor Processes Underlying Behavioral Flexibility

Adaptive behavior depends on a variety of brain functions, such as learning, decision-making, spatial navigation and motor control, which have been studied using two main strategies. Trial-based tasks allow their mechanistic dissection but tend to generate highly stereotypical behavior, whereas open-field investigations capture naturalistic dynamics with less experimental control. To leverage the strengths of both approaches, we developed a behavioral framework which recreates dilemmas faced by animals during patch foraging. In the Tower Foraging Park (TFP), mice harvest rewards along square towers (patches) by making quarter-turns around them in a single direction (exploit) and alternating between towers (explore) as patches eventually deplete. Within a couple of sessions, naive mice performed quarter-turns in the rewarded direction with increasing vigor and reduced variability, and switched towers after short exploitation bouts. When the harvest direction was reversed, mice rapidly adapted their turning direction, with quarter-turn trajectory variability and speed becoming decoupled. Mice subjected to daily reversals adapted progressively faster, revealing meta-learning. When the next rewarding tower became harder to locate, all trained mice increased exploitation duration, although metalearners outperformed animals trained under stable contingencies. Altogether, the TFP produced behavior consistent with foraging theory and revealed new processes facilitating flexible foraging: meta-learning and the decoupling of movement variability and speed. Moreover, because the TFP accommodates diverse protocol variants, adheres to FAIR principles, and is fully compatible with modern neurophysiological techniques, it provides a promising platform for mechanistic investigations of brain functions underlying adaptive behavior while maintaining ethological validity.