Maladaptive explore/exploit trade-offs in schizophrenia

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a complex disorder that remains poorly understood, particularly at the systems level. In this opinion article we argue that the explore/exploit trade-off concept provides a holistic and ecologically valid framework to resolve some of the apparent paradoxes that have emerged within schizophrenia research. We review recent evidence suggesting that fundamental explore/exploit behaviors may be maladaptive in schizophrenia during physical, visual, and cognitive foraging. We also describe how theories from the broader optimal foraging literature, such as the marginal value theorem (MVT), could provide valuable insight into how aberrant processing of reward, context, and cost/effort evaluations interact to produce maladaptive responses.

Keywords: exploitation; exploration; flexible decision-making; foraging; psychiatric disorders.