That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Regret

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

In today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy, we discuss the neuroscience behind how your brain processes regret. 

Hi, my name is Olive Kirk Olson, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. Today I want to talk to you about something that every single one of us has experienced, and that's regret. And I don't mean the tiny, silly regrets. Although those count two. You know, ordering the wrong thing at a restaurant when the person decides you get the meal that looks amazing,

or deciding not to bring a jacket, then of course it rains, or sending an email and instantly realizing that you should have waited five minutes before pressing sent. I am absolutely famous for that one. Those are regrets, but they are small ones. The more interesting ones, the ones that are sometimes painful, are the bigger regrets. The job you didn't apply for. The person you never asked out. The apology that you never made.

The decision you made quickly, that shaped the next five years of your life. The thing you did when you were angry that you wish you could take back. I know for me, probably my single biggest regret in my life is before my father passed away, he wanted to have a beer with me. But he was sick, and I decided not to have that beer with him because I didn't think it was a pro-crate. I should have had that beer with my dad.

Regret is one of those emotions that feels awful, but from the point of view of the brain, it is not useless. In fact, regret is one of the brain's learning tools. It is a signal that says, hold on, there is another possible version of this story, and maybe that version would have been better. So in today's podcast, the neuroscience of regret. I'm going to talk about what is regret. Why does it feel so bad? What's happening in the brain when we imagine a better alternative?

And perhaps, most importantly, when is regret useful and when does it become something that just keeps us stuck? Let's start with a basic idea. Regret is not simply feeling bad. You can feel sad without regret. You can feel disappointed without regret. You can feel frustrated without regret. Regret has a very specific ingredient. That ingredient is counterfactual thinking.

Counterfactual thinking is just a fancy way of saying that the brain is thinking about what did not happen. You are comparing reality to an imagined alternative. I chose A, but what if I'd chosen B? I stayed home, but what if I'd gone out? I sold the stock, but what if I'd held on to it? I said the thing, but what if I'd kept my mouth shut? That comparison, those comparisons that you make in your head, that's the heart of regret.

It's the key part to it. The brain isn't just processing the outcome that you got. It's processing the outcome you could have gotten. And that makes regret different from simple disappointment. Imagine you buy a lottery ticket and you lose. That's disappointing, but it's not regret. Now imagine you always buy the same lottery numbers, but one week you forget and that week your numbers come up.

In fact, my mother has trapped me into this. She gave me lottery numbers to play, and I play them twice a week every week because I know with 100% certainty that the one week I forget, I'm going to win. Now that would be regret if that happened. The actual outcome is the same in both cases. You didn't win the lottery, but in the second case, your brain can easily simulate a better alternative.

You can see what would have led to a different result, just buying that ticket. And that imagined path is what hurts. So what brain systems are involved? As with most things in neuroscience, there's not a single regret center in the brain. I kind of wish there was because it would have been the podcast shorter and exams easier, but the brain doesn't work that way. Regret involves a brain network. And this is true of all of the higher level cognitive processes. One key player in regret is the orbital frontal cortex.

The orbital frontal cortex sits just above the eyes, and it's heavily involved in evaluating outcomes, updating values, and comparing options. We've talked about it before when we talked about reinforcement learning. The OSC helps the brain answer questions like, was that worth it? Was this better than expected? Should I choose this next time? In regret, the orbital frontal cortex seems to be especially important because it can compare the value of what happened with the value of what might have happened. It's not just tracking rewards, it's tracking missed rewards.

And that's a big deal because missed rewards is one of the things that, teaches us. Another important player in this story is my old friend, the anterior cingulate cortex or ac c. If you'd listen to this podcast for a while, you've heard me talk about the ACC before. It's involved in conflict monitoring, error detection, and noticing when something needs more control. When you make a mistake, or when two possible responses compete with one another, the ACC tends to get involved. Regret has that flavor. It says something went wrong. Something went wrong. here, not necessarily morally wrong, but computationally wrong. The outcome was worse than it might have been and the brain needs to pay attention. Now, the stratum plays a role here too, which we've

talked about before in reward learning, and specifically the nucleus accumbens, which is a part of the brain's reward system. And the stridum, as we've talked about in previous episodes, is involved in reward reinforcement learning. It helps update the values of actions based on what happened after we made them. It turns out better than expected. Domain systems help reinforce the choice. If something turns out worse than expected, the value of that choice can be reduced. And this is what the strideom is doing. Now regret adds a twist to this process. The brain's not only asking, was the outcome good or bad, it is asking, was the outcome good or bad relative to the outcome I could have had? That relative comparison is why

regret can be such a powerful teacher. Let's use a simple example. Say you're going to pick between one of two lines at the grocery store. I always have this debate. You pick the left line that looks shorter, you feel good about the decision. Then the person in front of you needs a price check, pulls out coupons or starts asking questions and suddenly the right line is moving beautifully. You look over and think, I should have picked that one. That's regret in a miniature sense. brain had an action, an outcome, and an alternative outcome, and because the alternative outcome is visible, the regret becomes stronger. If you had no idea what happened the other line, you might be annoyed, but wouldn't feel the same kind of regret. This is one reason regret is so common in the modern world. We're constantly exposed to alternatives.

Social media shows us the party we did not attend, the career path we didn't choose, the vacations we're not on, the body we do not have, the life we imagine someone else is living. You just see this all the time. The brain is swimming in counterfactuals. It is constantly being invited to compare the real life in front of us with an imagined life somewhere else. And that's not always good for us. Now, regret's not necessarily bad. In fact, if you never experience regret, that would be a problem. Regret helps us learn from choices.

It helps us change future behavior. It helps us repair social damages. It helps us avoid repeating mistakes. If you say something hurtful to a friend and later feel regret, that regret can motivate an apology. If you stay up too late before an important event and feel terrible the next day, regret can help you go to bed earlier next time. If you ignore your health for years and then realize you wish you had to exit sooner, regret can become the emotional push that starts change. So regret has a function. It's not just your brain torturing you for fun.

It's trying to update your future behaviors. It is saying next time, choose differently. But like many useful brain processes, regret can become harmful when it gets stuck. And this is where regret starts to overlap with rumination. Rumination is repetitive negative thinking. It is when the brain keeps returning to the same thought over and over and over again without solving anything. Useful regret has movement. It leads somewhere.

I regret what I did, so I'll apologize. I regret not preparing, so I'll prepare next time. I regret that opportunity, so I'll watch for the next one. Unhelpful regret has no movement. It loops. Why did I do that? How could I mean so stupid? What is wrong with me? Why didn't I know better? And then five minutes later, the same questions again, and again, and again. Anyone that's ever gone through a breakup has experienced this. From the brain's point of view, this may involve the default mode network, the set of brain regions that tends to become more active and we are thinking about ourselves, remembering the past, imagining a future, and simulating other people's minds. The default mode network is not bad. It's essential. It helps us build a sense of self and learn from experience.

But when it gets locked into repetitive self-focused, negative thought, it can become part of the problem. That's why regret can be so sticky. It involves memory, emotion, self-evaluation, and imagination all at once. You're not just remembering what happened. You're imagining what could have happened. You're evaluating yourself. for not making that imagined version real.

That is a lot for the brain to carry. There's also an interesting difference between regrets of action and regrets of inaction. Regrets of action are things we did. I said the wrong thing. I took the wrong job. I made the bad purchase. I ended the relationship. Regrets of inaction are things we did not do.

I did not apply. I did not travel. I did not tell someone how I felt. I did not take the chance. So in the short term, actions often produce stronger regret because the mistake is concrete. You can point to the thing you did. But over the long term, an action can become more painful. Why?

Because the alternative stays open in imagination. The thing you'd not do, you know, you make it perfect. You make it bigger than it is because reality never had the chance to ruin it. The job you did not take might have been amazing. The relationship you did not pursue might have been perfect. The city you did not move to might have changed your life. Of course, maybe the job would have been awful. The relationship would have failed and the city would have been too expensive.

But because you never lived that reality, your brain is free to polish the fantasy. This is one of the sneaky things about regret. It compares real life with all its messiness to an imagined life that has not had to survive contact with reality. And that comparison is just not fair. So what do we do with regret? the first step is to ask whether regret contains information. Is the regret telling you something useful? If it is, listen to it. Did you hurt someone? Repair it. Did you make a decision too quickly? Build on a pause next time. Did you avoid something because you were scared? Maybe that tells you

what matters to you. But if regret has already given you the lesson is now just looping, then the job changes. At that point, the goal is to not keep analyzing. The goal is to stop feeding the loop. One strategy I could give you is you is you should turn regret into a rule. Instead of saying something like, I can't believe I did that, just say next time I will do this. That moves the brain from self-attack to future planning. It recruits control systems instead of emotional memory. And another strategy with regret is just self-compassion. You know, give yourself a hall pass. Apologize to yourself, but then don't live with it. Self-compassion lowers the threat that you can actually extract the lesson. It's not letting

yourself off the hook. It is creating conditions where learning is possible. Just remember that regret things because outcomes matter to you, because people matter to you, your future matters to you. A brain that's feeling regret is the brain that is trying to learn. The goal is not to eliminate regret. The goal is to let regret teach you something without letting it take over. So, thanks for listening. I hope you found that interesting about regret. Don't forget our website, that neuroscience guy.com. There's links to Etsy where you can buy merch and Patreon, where you can support the podcast. Don't forget to follow us on social media, X-treads and Instagram at that neurosate guy. And you can email us at That Neuroscience Guy at Gmail.com

and tell us, because we want to know what you want to know about the neuroscience of daily life. And of course, the podcast itself. Thank you so much for listening. And if you haven't already, please subscribe. My name is Olaf Krogolson, and I am that Neuroscience. guy. I'll see you soon for another full episode of the podcast.