How widespread inhibition modulates response variability. The panels depict three hypothetical situation where three neurons are active, corresponding to three possible, responses (A, B, C). Each neuron’s activation is represented by the height a corresponding bar; widespread inhibition T is represented as a horizontal line. In (A) widespread inhibition T limits the selection to options A and B. The final selection will be determined by their relative activations above threshold (dark gray part of the bars). (B,C) represent different versions of the same situation, where the exploration/exploitation tradeoff is modulated by the raising [(A) increased exploitation] or lowering [(B) increase exploration] the inhibitory thresholds T.