Fig. 1.

Dynamic Clicks Task structure and example trial. a Schematic of task events and timing. A center light illuminates indicating the rat may initiate a trial by poking its nose into a center port. Auditory clicks are generated from state-dependent Poisson processes (the two states are schematized by light green and light blue backgrounds) and played concurrently from left and right speakers. The hidden state toggles between two states according to a telegraph process with hazard rate h. When the auditory clicks end, and the center light turns off, the rats must infer which of the two states the trial ended in and report their decision by poking into one of two reward ports. Trials have random durations so the rat must be prepared to answer at all time points. b An example trial. The hidden state transitions randomly, and the auditory clicks (black triangles) are generated accordingly. The optimal inference process (black line; see text for its derivation) accumulates clicks, and discounts accumulated evidence proportionally to the volatility of the environment and click statistics. For the optimal process, a choice is generated at the end of the trial according to whether the optimal inference variable is above or below 0