Rats too can show regret

Researchers have revealed that rats too show regret, a cognitive behavior that once thought to be uniquely and fundamentally human.

To measure the cognitive behavior of regret, A. David Redish, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience in the University of Minnesota Department of Neuroscience, and Adam Steiner, a graduate student in the Graduate Program in Neuroscience, who led the study, started from the definitions of regret that economists and psychologists have identified in the past.

Redish and Steiner developed a new task that asked rats how long they were willing to wait for certain foods.

In this task, which they named "Restaurant Row," the rat is presented with a series of food options but has limited time at each "restaurant."

Research findings show rats were willing to wait longer for certain flavors, implying they had individual preferences. Because they could measure the rats' individual preferences, Steiner and Redish could measure good deals and bad deals. Sometimes, the rats skipped a good deal and found themselves facing a bad deal.

The findings have been published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.