More Brain Points

How personal traits effect regret?

Regrets has always effected in many ways emotionally but we don’t realize how much a regrets effects the parts of our brain. Recently in a study done by Adam P. Steiner and A. David Reddish measured the brain behavior in decision making. They did the experiment called “Restaurant Row” where they made a maze for rats which included a lot of little stop for food. Each food stall had a waiting time assigned to it and the rat had to decide whether or not he should wait and get the food or go to the next food stall. During this experiment, Steiner and Reddish measured their brain behavior. It is believed that decision making takes places in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and the ventral striatum. When the rats were making decision of whether or not to eat food the level of OFC and ventral striatum went high. During each stall they had different level which showed the level of regret. Different levels of decision making can effect the consequences that come with it.

 A similar study like this was done called “Lasting Impact of Regret and Gratification on Resting Brain Activity and Its Relation to Depressive Traits” by Hamdi Eryilmaz, Dimitri V. D. Ville, Sophie Schwartz and Patrik Vuilleumier. In this study the researchers looked at how brain activity and functional connectivity at rest is effected after regret and gratification. They also looked at how personal traits like depression and rumination of an individual also effect these emotions. For this experiment they made few people gamble in fMRI and saw how poor decision making effected the medial and ventral prefrontal areas differently. In the results its shown that the gratification and regrets effect the brain state which then effect the person emotionally. The personality traits also effected the emotional outcomes, when the person was depressed the brain regions that related to the reward showed an activity when there was gratification than regret. Also when people showed high level of regret, the lateral OFC in the brain was activated more than gratification.

Overall the level of regret effects the brain behavior. Not only the person is effected mentally but this also effect emotionally.