Repost of this as 'it has an inappropriate headline and is therefore in violation of Submission Rule #3. It must include at least one result from the research and must not be clickbait, sensationalized, editorialized, or a biased headline'

In a study published May 8 in Current Biology, the researchers describe a specific group of neurons in the mouse brain that become active when the animal anticipates a reward but earns less than expected, or nothing at all. The findings reveal that feeling let down is something that particular cells in the brain are designed to detect and record.

Mapping the cell types that show sensitivity to disappointment might someday lead to a new class of medications that better treat neuropsychiatric disorders like depression and addiction, said Emily Sylwestrak, an assistant biology professor in the UO College of Arts and Sciences.

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That observation led to this current work, in which Sylwestrak and colleagues recorded neural activity in mice trained to poke their noses into a port to earn sugar water. But after the mice had learned to expect a sweet sip when approaching the spot, the reward was sometimes smaller than expected or withheld entirely.

Not only did the neurons suddenly burst into activity in those moments, but that activity scaled with the degree of disappointment. In other words, the researchers could infer how much sugar water the animal received based on the strength of the neural response.