Recent findings suggest that acetylcholine mediates uncertainty-seeking behaviors through its projection to dopamine neurons - another neuromodulatory system known for its major role in reinforcement learning and decision-making. In this paper, we propose a leaky-integrate-and-fire model of this mechanism. It implements a softmax-like selection with an uncertainty bonus by a cholinergic drive to dopaminergic neurons, which in turn influence synaptic currents of downstream neurons. The model is able to reproduce experimental data in two decision-making tasks. It also predicts that: (i) in the absence of cholinergic input, dopaminergic activity would not correlate with uncertainty, and that (ii) the adaptive advantage brought by the implemented uncertainty-seeking mechanism is most useful when sources of reward are not highly uncertain. Moreover, this modeling work allows us to propose novel experiments which might shed new light on the role of acetylcholine in both random and directed exploration. Overall, this study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the role of the cholinergic system and, in particular, its involvement in decision-making.

中文翻译：

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建模由对多巴胺的胆碱能影响介导的不确定性寻求行为。

最近的发现表明，乙酰胆碱通过投射到多巴胺神经元上来介导不确定性行为，多巴胺神经元是另一种神经调节系统，因其在强化学习和决策中的主要作用而闻名。在本文中，我们提出了这种机制的泄漏集成和点火模型。它通过胆碱能驱动多巴胺能神经元来实现类似softmax的选择，并具有不确定性加成，反过来又影响下游神经元的突触电流。该模型能够在两个决策任务中重现实验数据。它还预测：（i）在没有胆碱能输入的情况下，多巴胺能活动与不确定性不相关，并且（ii）当奖励来源不是高度不确定时，实施的不确定性寻求机制带来的适应性优势最为有用。 。此外，这项建模工作使我们能够提出新颖的实验，这可能会为乙酰胆碱在随机和定向探索中的作用提供新的思路。总体而言，这项研究有助于更全面地了解胆碱能系统的作用，尤其是其参与决策的过程。