Rats Like Humans Feel Regret about Wrong Decisions

Even rats experience regret similar to humans about making incorrect decisions,  a new study reveals. 

We all have regrets about certain decisions we take in life. But this unique cognitive behavior was observed in mammals other than humans by researchers at the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center.

The researchers created a food test for rats to gauge what decision they took regarding a task.

The researchers developed a task called Restaurant Row. In this task the rats were given the liberty to wait for a certain food as reward or move to something else, according to BBC News.

"It's like waiting in line at a restaurant," said A David Redish, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience in the University of Minnesota Department of Neuroscience. "If the line is too long at the Chinese food restaurant, then you give up and go to the Indian food restaurant across the street."

They observed that the rats were willing to wait for a longer time for a certain flavor.  But at certain times the rats skipped the preference and moved on to find themselves in a bad food option.  This was referred to as regret-inducing situation, as they often turned and looked back at the reward they denied.

"In humans, a part of the brain called the orbitofrontal cortex is active during regret. We found in rats that recognized they had made a mistake, indicators in the orbitofrontal cortex represented the missed opportunity. Interestingly, the rat's orbitofrontal cortex represented what the rat should have done, not the missed reward. This makes sense because you don't regret the thing you didn't get, you regret the thing you didn't do," said Redish.

"Regret is the recognition that you made a mistake, that if you had done something else, you would have been better off," said Redish. "The difficult part of this study was separating regret from disappointment, which is when things aren't as good as you would have hoped. The key to distinguishing between the two was letting the rats choose what to do."

Prior to this, researchers at Duke University Medical Centre in North Carolina found monkeys too feel regret and learn from the wrong decisions they make similar to humans.