by: Gene Koprowski.
Gambling stimulates a large portion of
the "win-related circuitry" in the human brain and boosts a person's
motivation to gamble, according to U.K. researchers. The study was
published in the Feb. 12 issue of Neuron, a medical journal.
The scientists said their research may also help explain why gambling attracts so many people.
"We devised a series of experiments to elicit near-miss and control phenomena in the laboratory and used functional magnetic resonance imaging [MRI] to explore the brain mechanisms underlying these cognitive distortions," said senior study author Dr. Luke Clark, of the Behavioral and Clinical Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cambridge.
The doctors found that near-wins were associated with significant activation of the ventral striatum and anterior insula, areas of the brain that were activated by gambling wins too.
Dr. Clark and her associates also identified a significant association between insula activity and problem gambling. Previous studies have linked the insula with addictive behaviors.
Though participants said near-wins were more unpleasant than outright losses, near-wins did increase their motivation to keep gambling. However, this was only true when the participant had control over arranging the gamble.
"Gamblers often interpret near-misses as special events, which encourage them to continue to gamble. Our findings show that the brain responds to near-misses as if a win has been delivered, even though the result is technically a loss," said Clark.
"By linking psychological and neurobiological accounts of gambling, these data inform our understanding of gambling behavior within society, and by extrapolation, the capacity of gambling to become addictive and pathological," Clark said.
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