title: Active learning and decision making: an introduction to the collection.
abstract: The importance of exploratory behaviors by which agents actively sample information has been long appreciated in a wide range of disciplines ranging from machine and robot learning to neuroscience and psychology.  Given the complexity of these behaviors, progress in understanding them will require a confluence of ideas from these multiple fields.  This collection of articles in F1000Research aims to provide a home for a broad range of studies addressing this topic, including full length research articles, brief communications, single figure studies, and review/opinion articles, and studies using computational, behavioral or neural approaches.  Here, we provide an introduction to the collection which we hope will grow and become a valuable resource for the researchers exploring this topic.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuroscience, The Kavli Institute for Brain Science, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Jacqueline
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gottlieb
authors.affiliation: INRIA, Bordeaux Sud-Ouest, France.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lopes
authors.affiliation: INRIA, Bordeaux Sud-Ouest, France.
authors.forename: Pierre-Yves
authors.initials: PY
authors.lastname: Oudeyer