Until now it was believed that regret, that discomfort at having missed an opportunity or not having made the right decision at the time, was an exclusively human faculty , but according to research that has just been published in Nature Neuroscience, mice also experience that uneasiness.
To find out, the team of researchers designed a kind of circular "self-service" for rodents, with different chambers where the "customers" had to wait for the food to appear : the longer they waited, the more succulent the food gratification.
But sometimes, some animals could get impatient and go to another dispenser. It was then that the mouse remorse was clearly manifested : the giddy specimens would stop and look back as if thinking "I should have stayed there."
In addition, the scientists found that, as occurs in humans in similar situations, an area called the orbitofrontal cortex was activated in the mice.
What is represented in that brain area is not the lost reward, but the awareness of having made a bad decision . In other words, this recognition is so important to explain a good part of our conduct and our moral values.
