Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.
Facing the consequence of a decision we made can trigger emotionslike satisfaction, relief, or regret, which reflect our assessmentof what was gained as compared to what would have been gainedby making a different decision. These emotions are mediatedby a cognitive process known as counterfactual thinking. Bymanipulating a simple gambling task, we characterized a subject'schoices in terms of their anticipated and actual emotional impact.Normal subjects reported emotional responses consistent withcounterfactual thinking; they chose to minimize future regretand learned from their emotional experience. Patients with orbitofrontalcortical lesions, however, did not report regret or anticipatenegative consequences of their choices. The orbitofrontal cortexhas a fundamental role in mediating the experience of regret.
1 Institut des Sciences Cognitives, CNRS, 67, Boulevard Pinel 69675 Bron, France. 2 Department of Economics, University of Siena, Piazza San Francesco 7, 53100 Siena, Italy. 3 Service de Médecine Physique et Réadaptation, Hôpital de la Salpetriere, 47 Boulevard de l'Hôpital, 75013 Paris, France.
* These authors contributed equally to this work.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: sirigu{at}isc.cnrs.fr
Individual differences in moral judgment competence influence neural correlates of socio-normative judgments.
K. Prehn, I. Wartenburger, K. Meriau, C. Scheibe, O. R. Goodenough, A. Villringer, E. van der Meer, and H. R. Heekeren (2008)
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci
3, 33-46
|Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »
Predicting Human Interactive Learning by Regret-Driven Neural Networks.
Is Decreased Prefrontal Cortical Sensitivity to Monetary Reward Associated With Impaired Motivation and Self-Control in Cocaine Addiction?.
R. Z. Goldstein, N. Alia-Klein, D. Tomasi, L. Zhang, L. A. Cottone, T. Maloney, F. Telang, E. C. Caparelli, L. Chang, T. Ernst, et al. (2007)
Am J Psychiatry
164, 43-51
|Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »
Deciding how to decide: ventromedial frontal lobe damage affects information acquisition in multi-attribute decision making.
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: 
