Background
Pathologic gamblers are known to have abnormal neural responses associated with experiencing
monetary wins and losses. However, neural responsiveness during reward and loss expectations
in pathologic gamblers has not yet been investigated.
Methods
We used a functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm that allowed us to investigate
the dissociable reward- and loss-related expectancies with various probabilities of
winning or losing different amounts of money in 15 patients with problem gambling
(PRGs) and 16 healthy control subjects (HCs).
Results
Compared with HCs, PRGs showed stronger activation in the bilateral ventral striatum
to 5 euro than to 1 euro trials. PRGs also showed more activation of the bilateral
ventral striatum and left orbitofrontal cortex associated with gain-related expected
value than HCs. In addition, regression analyses indicated a highly significant negative
correlation between gambling severity scores and right amygdala activation associated
with gain-related expected value coding. There were no group differences in brain
activation for loss-related expected value.
Conclusions
PRGs show higher activity in the reward system during reward expectation than HCs,
whereas we observed no difference between PRGs and HC in the loss value system. Furthermore,
the negative relation between gambling severity and amygdala activation in gain expected
value coding suggests that more severe PRGs are less likely to be risk aversive during
gambling. Our study provides evidence that PRGs are characterized by abnormally increased
reward expectancy coding, which may render them overoptimistic with regard to gambling
outcomes.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 20, 2012
Accepted:
December 28,
2011
Received in revised form:
December 24,
2011
Received:
March 28,
2011
Identification
Copyright
© 2012 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
