Explore or exploit: Research that decodes animal decision-making earns NIH grant
Grant and Award Announcement
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 18-Dec-2025 11:11 ET (18-Dec-2025 16:11 GMT/UTC)
Researchers led by Noah Cowan at Johns Hopkins University have secured NIH funding to probe how animals alternate between "explore" (sensing) and "exploit" (task-oriented) behaviors in uncertain environments, using the weakly electric glass knifefish as a model. The team includes researchers from four universities who will integrate their expertise in neuroscience, math, engineering, and machine learning to build on 2023 findings in Nature Machine Intelligence that revealed the explore/exploit pattern across species from amoebas to humans. The project aims to decode decision triggers, with implications for robotics and medicine.
A new longitudinal study led by York University’s Department of Psychology published today finds that young adults experiencing periods of high stress, anxiety and depressed mood more frequently combined binge drinking with cannabis use in order to get more high and drunk, and were also likely to report more adverse life consequences when combining these substances. Lead author Jeffrey Wardell, Associate Professor in York University’s Faculty of Health, says that since cannabis use among young adults has increased after Canada legalized the drug, understanding why people combine the drug and outcomes when they do is important.
Climate change has already contributed substantially to the global burden of dengue fever, a new study finds. Over 260 million people live in places where dengue incidence is expected to more than double due to climate change by mid-century. The findings could help with public health planning and developing ways to mitigate such risks.
The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) and the Journalists Network on Generations are welcoming 13 distinguished reporters for the next class of the Journalists in Aging Fellows Program, now in its 16th year.
MB Mitcham, Director of the Online MPH Program and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Global and Community Health, College of Public Health, received funding for: “Strengthening Food as Medicine Pathways in Southwest Virginia.”