Amplified Striatal Responses to Near-Miss Outcomes in Pathological Gamblers.

ABSTRACT: Near-misses in gambling games are losing events that come close to a win. Near-misses were previously shown to recruit reward-related brain regions including the ventral striatum, and to invigorate gambling behavior, supposedly by fostering an illusion of control. Given that pathological gamblers are particularly vulnerable to such cognitive illusions, their persistent gambling behavior might result from an amplified striatal sensitivity to near-misses. In addition, animal studies have shown that behavioral responses to near-miss-like events are sensitive to dopamine, but this dopaminergic influence has not been tested in humans. To investigate these hypotheses, we recruited 22 pathological gamblers and 22 healthy controls who played a slot machine task delivering wins, near-misses and ful

SUBMITTER: Sescousse G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4987843 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature