Study: Rats feel regret, too
Thinkstock


While conducting research on decision-making in rats, the University of Minnesota's David Redish and his graduate student, Adam Steiner, made a different discovery. The pair saw that when a rat made a mistake, it stopped and looked backwards, as if it felt regret.
As Wired reports, the two decided to create an experiment that should cause rats to have regret, then measured the behavioral and neurophysiological markers that are consistent with the feeling. They taught rats to go into a contraption called "restaurant row" that had four different sections serving various flavors of pellets at different intervals (for example, a cherry-flavored pellet might come out in eight seconds, while a banana-flavored pellet could take 20 seconds).
Each rat had a threshold based on their taste preference, and Steiner and Redish used those thresholds to see what was a "good deal" and what was a "bad deal," and what happened when the rat passed over a good deal. The researchers found that when a rat skipped a good deal and went to a bad deal, they would stop and look at the restaurant they had bypassed. "It looked like Homer Simpson going, 'D'oh!'" Redish told Wired.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Redish doesn't think the findings should be too shocking. "We're not surprised by hearts or legs being similar, so why should we be surprised that brain structures and computations are similar?" he said. The results of the observation were published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience. Read an in-depth look at the study at Wired.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
-
Israel's plan for confining all Palestinians in 'humanitarian city'
The Explainer Defence minister wants to establish zone in Gaza for displaced people – which they would not be allowed to leave – prompting accusations of war crimes
-
Secluded retreats for aspiring writers
The Week Recommends These tranquil hideaways are the perfect place to put pen to paper
-
The Velvet Sundown: viral band that doesn't actually exist
In the Spotlight These AI-generated rock hits are brought to listeners by… no one
-
New York plans first nuclear plant in 36 years
Speed Read The plant, to be constructed somewhere in upstate New York, will produce enough energy to power a million homes
-
Dehorning rhinos sharply cuts poaching, study finds
Speed Read The painless procedure may be an effective way to reduce the widespread poaching of rhinoceroses
-
Breakthrough gene-editing treatment saves baby
speed read KJ Muldoon was healed from a rare genetic condition
-
Sea lion proves animals can keep a beat
speed read A sea lion named Ronan beat a group of college students in a rhythmic dance-off, says new study
-
Humans heal much slower than other mammals
Speed Read Slower healing may have been an evolutionary trade-off when we shed fur for sweat glands
-
Novel 'bone collector' caterpillar wears its prey
Speed Read Hawaiian scientists discover a carnivorous caterpillar that decorates its shell with the body parts of dead insects
-
Scientists find hint of alien life on distant world
Speed Read NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has detected a possible signature of life on planet K2-18b
-
Katy Perry, Gayle King visit space on Bezos rocket
Speed Read Six well-known women went into lower orbit for 11 minutes