Insight into differing decision-making strategies that underlie cognitively effort-based decision making using computational modeling in rats

Rationale
The rat cognitive effort task (rCET), a rodent model of cognitive rather than physical effort, requires animals to choose between an easy or hard visuospatial discrimination, with a correct hard choice more highly rewarded. Like in humans, there is stable individual variation in choice behavior. In previous reports, animals were divided into two groups—workers and slackers—based on their mean preference for the harder option. Although these groups differed in their response to pharmacological challenges, the rationale for using this criterion for grouping was not robust.

Methods
We collated experimental data from multiple cohorts of male and female rats performing the rCET and used a model-based framework combining drift diffusion modeling with cluster analysis to identify the decision-making processes underlying variation in choice behavior.

Results
We verified that workers and slackers are statistically different groups but also found distinct intra-group profiles. These subgroups exhibited dissociable performance during the attentional phase, linked to distinct decision-making profiles during choice. Reanalysis of previous pharmacology data using this model-based framework showed that serotonergic drug effects were explained by changes in decision boundaries and non-decision times, while scopolamine’s effects were driven by changes in decision starting points and rates of evidence accumulation.

Conclusions
Modeling revealed the decision-making processes that are associated with cognitive effort costs, and how these differ across individuals. Reanalysis of drug data provided insight into the mechanisms through which different neurotransmitter systems impact cognitively effortful attention and decision-making processes, with relevance to multiple psychiatric disorders.