Did you make the right decision?

How many times have you been in a situation and been stuck between two choices? Then once you finally choose an option, you immediately realize that you picked the wrong answer. Right away you experience regret, feeling almost as if you should’ve have known the right choice all along. People are forced to make these decisions a countless amount of times throughout their lives, but have you wondered how your brain interprets past experiences and influences your future decisions. Whether it be explicitly or implicitly, that regret that you experienced earlier plays a role in similar decisions that you may have to make in the future.

            Recently, a speaker in my neuroscience class actually addressed this very topic. Brian Sweis discussed a paper of his that focuses on orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and ventral striatum activity in relation to economic decision-making. Sweis’ experiment focuses on neuronal activity that is related to regret within the OFC and ventral striatum; Specifically, it focuses on OFC activity as rats are forced to make an economic decision as they pass four different reward zones.

 Results of the experiment showed that whenever rats realized they had made the wrong choice, they looked back at previous zone as a signal of regret. Each time this occurred, the activity within the OFC and the ventral striatum was actually very similar to when the rats first arrived at the old zone.  This information signifies that the OFC and the ventral striatum are not only involved in the recognition of a missed reward during regret but also play an extremely important role when thinking about past or future decisions. This information is something I find extremely interesting. First, this study was able to associate the emotion of regret in relation to decision making with specific regions of the brain.  Second, when this information is applied to a model suited for humans, it poses a very intriguing question. In humans we see that people with damaged OFC’s are unable to show any signs of regret and incapable of interpreting negative outcomes of future or past decisions.  People who have Schizophrenia actually fit this mold exactly; they don’t show any signs of regret and they can’t predict negative outcomes either.  My question is how can we use this newfound information about the OFC to come up with potential therapies for people with Schizophrenia?

           Sweis’ paper became even more interesting when compared to an article I found on e science news online. The article revolves around a study done by Adam Anderson that focuses on how the brain processes emotion.  The study found that people who derive similar emotions from certain experiences actually have similar patterns in their OFC as well. Anderson also discovered that there is probably a common code for emotions in OFC activity. This information hints that the OFC is integral to emotion processing and that people’s brains process emotion under a very similar code. I find this extremely interesting because Schizophrenia is a mental illness that impacts emotions as well. People with schizophrenia actually develop a lack of emotional expression. Once again we see that there is a correlation between the OFC and symptoms of Schizophrenia.

            Overall, both of these articles focus on the role of the OFC. Sweis’ paper showed that the OFC plays a role in economic decision making due to neural activity related to regret when reflecting on past or future decisions. While on the other hand, the article about Anderson’s study focuses on the OFC’s integral role in processing emotion and its conserved activity pattern amongst various people. But together they both highlight the OFC as a potential target for future experiments designed to help people with Schizophrenia. I hope that we can combine the information/data obtained from both experiments and use it to formulate potential therapies/drugs for Schizophrenia.

"Study Cracks How the Brain Processes emotions." Study Cracks How the Brain Processes Emotions. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 May 2016.

Bissonette, Gregory B., Daniel W. Bryden, and Matthew R. Roesch. "You Won't Regret Reading This." Nature Neuroscience Nat Neurosci 17.7 (2014): 892-93. Web.