move on from a patch of food, as continued exploitation will over time deplete the resource making its payoff potentially less valuable than other options (Charnov, 1976; Stephens and Krebs, 1986). Moreover, even when having located a fruitful source of nourishment, it is still beneficial on occasions to continue to explore and accrue more information about other potential alternatives (e.g., Daw, O'Doherty, Dayan, Seymour and Dolan, 2006). A role for the ACC in integrating an animal's record of choices and outcomes to gain a representation of the value of available options, rather than in just switching between responses, error detection or monitoring for response conflict, would imply that lesions to this region would render them selectively impaired in situations where they were required to use their reward history to guide action selection.
