Media release

From: Society for Neuroscience

Problem gamblers have impaired behavioural adjustment following losses

Those who experience gambling issues have altered brain activity following gambling losses that worsens their ability to learn and change their behaviour.

Millions of people in America suffer from problematic gambling issues. Kiyohito Iigaya from Columbia University led a study to explore why people who engage in problematic gambling continue gambling despite repeated losses that worsen their quality of life. The researchers used a decision-making task to probe behaviour related to reward learning and aversion to loss as they imaged the brains of study participants. This methodology revealed that problem gamblers are less able to adjust their predictions following losses as compared with people who recreationally gamble. According to the researchers, this may be because people who gamble problematically rely more on long-term learning, over the course of years, and are less able to learn from the losses in their immediate pasts. Neuroimaging revealed three brain regions that may contribute to this learning disparity, pointing to potential targets for problematic gambling treatment.