Sensitivity to reward loss as an indicator of animal emotion and welfare

The scientific study of animal emotion is an important emerging discipline in subjects ranging from neuroscience to animal welfare research. In the absence of direct measures of conscious emotion, indirect behavioural and physiological measures are used. However, these may have significant limitations (e.g. indicating emotional arousal but not valence (positivity versus negativity)). A new approach, taking its impetus from human studies, proposes that biases in information processing, and underlying mechanisms relating to the evaluation of reward gains and losses, may reliably reflect emotional valence in animals. In general, people are more sensitive to reward losses than gains, but people in a negative affective state (e.g. depression) are particularly sensitive to losses. This may underlie broader findings such as an enhanced attention to, and memory of, negative events in depressed individuals. Here we show that rats in unenriched housing, who typically exhibit indicators of poorer welfare and a more negative affective state than those in enriched housing, display a prolonged response to a decrease in anticipated food reward, indicating enhanced sensitivity to reward loss. Sensitivity to reward reduction may thus be a valuable new indicator of animal emotion and welfare.