Belief updates, learning and adaptive decision making

People make decisions every day and the outcomes of those decisions often lead them to change their beliefs and in some cases shape their future behavior. How does the brain decide which meal to order at a restaurant, and how does it learn from the experience of eating that meal? Here we review work from neuroscience, psychology and economics that shapes our understanding of how the brain makes decisions and learns through experience. We focus on computational mechanisms that can explain core phenomena in learning and decision making as well as how such mechanisms are implemented in the brain. Our review highlights both the considerable progress made in the last decades elucidating mechanisms of learning and decision making as well as the vast territory of open questions that remain to be answered.