The Neuroscience And Neuropsychology Of Gambling

Gambling disorder is a behavioural addiction that represents the clinical extreme of a spectrum of gambling-related harm. What insights can neuroscientific and neuropsychological methods provide to help understand this condition and improve existing programs for treatment and prevention? This volume describes recent research using an array of contemporary tools including structural and functional brain imaging, and neurocognitive assessment. These analyses consider brain activity and psychological functioning in people with gambling disorder under resting conditions, due to tasks of reward processing and inhibitory control, and as a function of important sources of individual differences including depression and impulsivity. This volume also synthesizes contemporary research using animal models to examine decision-making under uncertainty from a behavioural neuroscience perspective, as well as synthesizing evidence from pharmacological treatments for gambling disorders. These findings complement research to understand substance use disorders and other emerging forms of behavioural addiction. This volume contains contributions from many of the leading research groups in this exciting field. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of International Gambling Studies.

Like in the case of drugs, gambling hijacks reward circuits in a brain which is not prepared to receive such intense stimulation. Dopamine is normally released in response to reward and uncertainty in order to allow animals to stay alive in their environment – where rewards are relatively unpredictable. In this case, behavior is regulated by environmental feedbacks, leading animals to persevere or to give up. In contrast, drugs provide a direct, intense pharmacological stimulation of the dopamine system that operates independently of environmental feedbacks, and hence causes “motivational runaways”. With respect to gambling, the confined environment experienced by gamblers favors the emergence of excitatory conditioned cues, so that positive feedbacks take over negative feedbacks. Although drugs and gambling may act differently, their abnormal activation of reward circuitry generates an underestimation of negative consequences and promotes the development of addictive/compulsive behavior. In Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease, dopamine-related therapies may disrupt these feedbacks on dopamine signalling, potentially leading to various addictions, including pathological gambling. The goal of this Research Topic is to further our understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the development of pathological gambling. This eBook contains a cross-disciplinary collection of research and review articles, ranging in scope from animal behavioral models to human imaging studies.

An analysis of how economic theories can be used to understand disordered and pathological gambling that calls on empirical evidence about behavior and the brain and argues that addictive gambling is the basic form of all addiction. The explanatory power of economic theory is tested by the phenomenon of irrational consumption, examples of which include such addictive behaviors as disordered and pathological gambling. Midbrain Mutiny examines different economic models of disordered gambling, using the frameworks of neuroeconomics (which analyzes decision making in the brain) and picoeconomics (which analyzes patterns of consumption behavior), and drawing on empirical evidence about behavior and the brain. The book describes addiction in neuroeconomic terms as chronic disruption of the balance between the midbrain dopamine system and the prefrontal and frontal serotonergic system, and reviews recent evidence from trials testing the effectiveness of antiaddiction drugs. The authors argue that the best way to understand disordered and addictive gambling is with a hybrid picoeconomic-neuroeconomic model.

The field of gambling research has advanced rapidly in recent years with the sophistication of the research mirroring the complexity of this public health concern. This is an exciting time for gambling research. Psychology, genetics, neurobiology, and treatment have joined forces to address not only gambling but also the universal theme of what gambling represents: conflicting motivations that drive behaviour. This book gathers important recent research in the field.

The Psychodynamics and Psychology of Gambling is the first volume in the four-volume The Gambling Theory and Research Series. Author Mikal Aasved felt a need to fill what he perceived to be a lack of background sources or reviews of literature pertaining to gambling theory and research. This series will present major findings of leading researchers as they study the causes and effects of gambling, both recreational and excessive. This first entry in the series reviews the most influential psychodynamic and psychological theories that explain why people gamble. Psychoanalytical theorists discussed include Freud, Von Hattingberg, Fenichel, Bergler, Simmel, Greenson, Stekel, and others. Aasved includes sections on behavioral (learning or reinforcement theory) psychological approaches to gambling with discussion of Skinner's ideas and research findings as well as Pavlov's principles. This book begins with the question 'Why do people gamble?' and offers many theories proposed by clinicians, laboratory and field researchers, and participants as they seek to explain the motivation behind gambling. The differences between gambling as entertainment and gambling compulsion is a focus of much research. Aasved addresses ideas set forth as to why some people are able to control their gambling and others cannot, even when it means sacrificing their jobs, family, and material possessions. This text provides a comprehensive background into theories of addiction research as studied by leaders in the field.

The world is full of uncertainty. In unpredictable circumstances, can emotions facilitate advantageous decision-making? A neuroscience team, led by Antonio Damasio, explored this question using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). To the present day, the findings of numerous IGT-related investigations strongly influence clinical and interdisciplinary research, for example, in neuroeconomics and neuromarketing. This special issue examines IGT-based research progress over the past 20 years through literature reviews, clinical examinations, model construction, theoretical integration, and brain imaging technology. Both supportive and opposing viewpoints are provided to frame correlations between rationality, emotion, decision-making, and IGT. Potential future directions for IGT studies are discussed

Walking through the doors of a casino can feel like entering a portal into another dimension. A cacophony of electronic and human sounds assaults the ears as you watch people transacting large amounts of money. But this is no ordinary purchasing of goods or services where you quietly wave a card or hand out notes from a purse. Instead, money is swapped for colourful plastic chips that are placed, pushed, and thrown onto gaming tables with seemingly reckless abandon by a wide array of people, young, old, cultured, relaxed, happy, and grim. Phil Watts, as an experienced forensic psychologist, knew a lot about human nature before he walked into his first casino at 40 years of age. He had treated clients with a wide range of difficulties including gambling, yet was still struck by the casino environment — an exciting world with its own culture, pace, rules, social etiquette, and shared expectations. This other world intrigued and surprised him. So, he wrote a book about it. Casino Life will be of interest to those who seeking to know more about casinos and their psychological effects, those who seek to find out why others gamble, and those who do gamble — not as a treatment, but as a window to see what you are doing and how that has an impact upon you. Along the way you will read about why people gamble, why gambling can become addictive and the treatments used to help problem gamblers, as well as the beliefs around gambling and some of the elaborate theories people use to explain why they try to defy mathematical odds. You will also learn about the fascinating cultural and behavioural patterns of everyday casino life.