I watched as my young daughter took her first sips of a vanilla milkshake. Slow at first, then she began to quickly slurp up the delicious treat. And then, suddenly, she stopped… BRAIN FREEZE! Her actions of rapidly consuming the cold beverage were punished with the adverse consequence of a brief headache. Understandably, she took more caution when she returned to her dessert. Punishment is when an instrumental action causes an aversive event. When effective, this negative consequence reduces the probability that action will occur again in the future, hence my daughter no longer hastily consumes cold drinks. Rapid behavioral adjustment to aversive consequences is crucial to our survival, health, and happiness. Dysfunction in punishment is characteristic of the symptoms underlying myriad neuropsychiatric diseases. Understanding the psychological processes and neural mechanisms of punishment is, therefore, a top priority. But, although seemingly simple, punishment is theoretically quite complex. It is also challenging to model in the laboratory, owing to the many confounding processes that can occur when aversive events are presented. In this issue, Jean-Richard-Dit-Bressel et al. [1] provide a review of punishment, the content of its learning, considerations for its study, its neural mechanisms, and how its dysfunction might contribute to pathological states. The review, therefore, has something for everyone.

For anyone interested in punishment, the review outlines what punishment is and, crucially, what it is not. Punishment is not active avoidance/escape. Although rare in Los Angeles, this week it is raining. I use an umbrella to avoid getting wet. In this case, performance of the action prevents or stops an aversive event. In contrast, punishment is passive avoidance, withholding an action prevents the aversive event. Punishment is also not aversive Pavlovian conditioning. In punishment, the aversive event is contingent on the subject’s behavior—a brain freeze is contingent upon hasty ice cream consumption. In aversive Pavlovian conditioning, the aversive event is signaled by associated stimuli and occurs independent of the subject’s behavior—a gray cloud in the sky predicts rain, regardless of my behavior. Punishers come in three broad flavors, as follows: (1) positive punishers, actual aversive events; (2) negative punishers, omission of a pleasant event; (3) conditional punishers, stimuli predictive of an aversive event. For clarity, the authors provide glossary that will be appreciated by novices and aficionados alike.

Log in or create a free account to read this content

Gain free access to this article, as well as selected content from this journal and more on nature.com

Access through your institution

or

Sign in or create an account
Continue with Google
Continue with ORCiD