Attenuated Directed Exploration during Reinforcement Learning in Gambling Disorder.

ABSTRACT: Gambling disorder (GD) is a behavioral addiction associated with impairments in value-based decision-making and behavioral flexibility and might be linked to changes in the dopamine system. Maximizing long-term rewards requires a flexible trade-off between the exploitation of known options and the exploration of novel options for information gain. This exploration-exploitation trade-off is thought to depend on dopamine neurotransmission. We hypothesized that human gamblers would show a reduction in directed (uncertainty-based) exploration, accompanied by changes in brain activity in a fronto-parietal exploration-related network. Twenty-three frequent, non-treatment seeking gamblers and twenty-three healthy matched controls (all male) performed a four-armed bandit task during functional mag

SUBMITTER: Wiehler A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7984586 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature