Neurobiological basis of frustration

The main feature shared by the phenomena involving unexpected changes of reinforcement is that there is a discrepancy between expected and received reward. Consequently, the behavior is modified according to this difference; the animals have an emotional response to the surprising reward change, called frustration. Some of the paradigms that are commonly used to study these problems are: consummatory Successive Negative Contrast and consummatory Extinction. This review describes the major works that investigate the neuroanatomical and neurophysiological mechanisms involved in these studies, and the main tasks related with the administration of drugs that modulate the memory of the surprising reward changes.