Brain mechanism of the enhanced impulsiveness by competitive foraging

为了优化它们的觅食，动物不应该攻击它们遇到的所有食物。相反，他们必须根据盈利能力对食品项目的评估进行选择，盈利能力是每种食品的数量和接近程度的乘积。然而，它不是唯一确定的，而是高度依赖于上下文，即优先考虑数量还是接近程度。研究表明，个体群体中竞争性觅食的经验会增强冲动性，使刚孵化的雏鸡做出接近性选择。我们还发现，竞争性觅食抑制了代表预期食物奖励的神经元信号。抑制性过程被认为参与了时间折扣的控制。

In order to optimize their foraging, animals should not attack all of the food they encountered. Instead, they must choose based on the evaluation of food items by the profitability, which is product of the amount and the proximity of the each food. It is however not uniquely determined, but is highly context-dependent, as to if priority should go to the amount or the proximity. It has been shown that experience of competitive foraging in group of individuals lead to enhanced impulsiveness so that newly hatched chicks made proximity-oriented choices. We also found that the competitive foraging suppresses the neuronal signals that represent anticipated food reward. The suppressive process is supposed to be involved in the control of temporal discounting.