Fig. 2: STZ-treated mice are able to acquire the basic structure of the naturalistic, unconstrained, neuroeconomic foraging task Restaurant Row.

a Timeline. Dashed box indicates time period relevant for this figure: first week of behavioral testing when all costs were fixed at 1 s delays (green epoch). b Task schematic. Mice were allotted a 45 min daily budget to invest time foraging for their primary source of food in a self-paced manner. Costs to obtain rewards were in the form of delays mice would have to wait near feeder sites. Mice were required to run in a counterclockwise direction encountering offers for different flavors at each “restaurant” in serial order. Each restaurant, separated by hallways, was divided into a T-shaped “offer zone” choice point and a separate “wait zone” that housed the pellet dispenser. Upon offer zone entry from the correct heading direction, a tone sounded whose pitch indicated the delay mice would have to wait if accepting the offer by entering the wait zone. If entered, tone pitch descended in the wait zone, cuing the indicated delay. Each trial terminated if mice skipped in the offer zone, quit during the countdown in the wait zone, or earned a reward, after which animals were required to proceed to the next restaurant. This task captures dissociable motivational elements of choice deliberation, re-evaluation, and opportunity costs that depend on subjective value and the economic demand of the environment. c–g Simple behavioral metrics across the first week of testing during which all offers were 1 s only (lowest pitch, 4 kHz): c laps run in the correct direction, d inter-trial travel time between restaurants, e total rewards earned, f earnings split by flavors ranked from least to most preferred by summing each day’s end-of-session totals in each restaurant and g normalized to number of laps run (treatment x rank: F = 3.823, p < 0.01). In (c–e) right, *represents significant differences between VEH- and STZ-treated groups on day 7 (dashed box), p < 0.01, t-test. Dots represent individual mice. Error bars represent ±1 SEM.