̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - gambling

Researchers to track impact of lockdown on alcohol, gambling and pornography use

cjb250 — Mon, 11 May 2020 23:16:03 +0000

̽��ֱ��UK was first placed on lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic on 23 March. Only essential businesses were allowed to remain open and everyone was told to stay at home, only to venture out for exercise and shopping.

Almost overnight, people’s lives were up-ended, with some people working from home while others have lost their jobs or been furloughed. People who live by themselves have suddenly found themselves with no social contact other than virtual.

To find out what impact this has had on people’s behaviour, Dr Valerie Voon from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Prof Henrietta Bowden-Jones, Director of the National Problem Gambling Clinic, London, have launched an online survey, HabiT – Habit Tracker – asking about changes in habits during lockdown, specifically quantifying alcohol, smoking, and online use of gambling, gaming and pornography. ̽��ֱ��habit tracker survey is available online. All responses will be anonymous.

̽��ֱ��survey is short, only taking 10 minutes to complete. ̽��ֱ��researchers are keen to hear from both those people who do not consider themselves to be vulnerable or exhibit problem behaviours and those who have struggled in the past or are struggling now.

“We expect to see an increase in these behaviours across the UK in response to the unprecedented circumstances we find ourselves in,” says Dr Voon. “In many cases, these changes will be people’s strategies for coping with the anxiety and stress caused by the pandemic and lockdown and, we hope, won’t have a long term impact if the behaviour can be controlled.

“For some people who might already have been struggling with or have a history of addiction these increased habits could prove problematic. ̽��ֱ��same goes for those people who find themselves in difficult circumstances, for example having lost their job or facing financial difficulties, or are struggling to cope with the lockdown. These more vulnerable individuals may find their behaviour has a more marked longer lasting effect, triggering an alcohol relapse, for instance, or reigniting a gambling addiction.”

Survey respondents may also take part in CrusH, an alcohol avoidance online training game for smartphones being developed which can be accessed as part of the survey.

Five tips for coping during the lockdown

Keep active: exercise outdoors and take part in online exercise workouts
Keep in touch with people socially online – try FaceTime, Skype or Zoom so that you see people
Maintain some regular structure: sleep, wake, work
Don't spend too much time looking at news
Use this as an opportunity to try something new – try baking, learning a new language, writing that novel you always dreamed of writing

Is the lockdown leading us to drink more alcohol or spend more time gambling online or watching pornography? Researchers today launch a survey aimed at tracking how our habits have changed in response to our forced isolation.

We expect to see an increase in these behaviours across the UK in response to the unprecedented circumstances we find ourselves in... For some people who might already have been struggling with or have a history of addiction these increased habits could prove problematic

Valerie Voon

iAmMrRob

Man using internet

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Gamblers predicted Brexit before financial traders, study finds

fpjl2 — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 11:19:12 +0000

International finance markets lagged behind punters having a flutter when it came to getting the right result on EU referendum night, according to research.

A study shows that gamblers sensed the Leave vote coming an hour before the currency experts in the city – creating a window of “arbitrage” during which the price difference between betting and FX markets yielded up to a 7% return on the pound.

Researchers from the Faculty of Economics compared the behaviours of the Betfair betting market and the sterling-dollar exchange rate from closure of the polls at 10pm, when odds of 10 to 1 were being offered on Brexit.

Both markets were “informationally inefficient”: very slow to react despite the data already available, as well as that flooding in from vote counts across the country. This meant there was money to be made by trading early on either market, say researchers.

̽��ֱ��study shows the betting market moved to a Leave result around 3am, by which time Brexit odds had reversed (1 to 10). Yet the foreign exchange market didn’t fully adjust to the reality of Brexit until around 4am. At 4:40am the BBC predicted a Leave victory.

̽��ֱ��difference in efficiency between the two markets created an hour when selling sterling and hedging the result of the referendum on Betfair would have made up to nine US cents of profit per UK pound – a significant “unleveraged return” that, in theory at least, could have seen astute traders make millions.

Researchers say the findings support the idea that gambling, or so-called “prediction markets”, might provide better forecasts of election outcomes than either experts or polls.

“Clearly, punters trading on Betfair are a different group of people to those dealing in FX for international finance. It looks like the gamblers had a better sense that Leave could win, or that it could at least go either way,” said Dr Tom Auld, lead author of the study published recently in the International Journal of Forecasting.

“Our findings suggest that participants across both markets suffered a behavioural bias as the results unfolded. Initially, both traders and gamblers could not believe the UK was voting to leave the EU, but this disbelief lingered far longer in the city.”

Auld and his co-author Prof Oliver Linton used the expected outcomes for each voting area – data that was publicly available prior to the referendum – to create a “forecasting model”.

By adjusting it with each actual result in turn, they say that their model would have predicted the final result from around 1:30am had it been deployed on the night.

“According to theories such as the ‘efficient market hypothesis’, the markets discount all publicly available information, so you cannot get an edge on the market with data already out there,” said Auld.

“However, using data publicly available at the time we show that the financial markets were very inefficient, and should have predicted Brexit possibly over two hours before they actually did.”

“If there is a second referendum, the vote should be better understood by markets – in line with a theoretical concept called the adaptive markets hypothesis. Studies such as ours will mean that market participants will be primed to profit from any possible opportunities and inefficiencies,” he said.

̽��ֱ��researchers compared their modelling with gambling and currency market data from EU referendum night. ̽��ֱ��website Betfair provided data from their exchange platform – the world’s largest betting exchange – between 10am on June 23 and 5am on June 24.

More than 182,000 individual bets were placed with Betfair and over 88,000 trades were made in the GBP futures market during this seven-hour window. Trading on Brexit broke records for a political event on Betfair, with over £128m wagered including over £50m that was matched on the night of the vote itself.

“Prediction markets such as betting exchanges are an ‘incentive compatible’ way to elicit the private opinions of participants, as people are putting their money where their mouth is, whereas what they tell pollsters can be cheap talk,” added Auld.

“Prediction markets could in theory be used to help value or price financial assets during events such as major votes. This is an area I will be focusing on for future research.”

Research shows how financial markets should have predicted Brexit hours before they eventually did, and that betting markets beat currency markets to the result by an hour – producing a “close to risk-free” profit-making opportunity, according to economists.

It looks like the gamblers had a better sense that Leave could win, or that it could at least go either way

Tom Auld

Lachlan Gowen

̽��ֱ��financial trading centre in the heart of London

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Opinion: Why danger is exciting – but only to some people

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 13:17:41 +0000

It has been the most deadly summer for wingsuit flying to date. But what makes some people want to base jump off a cliff, binge drink to oblivion or hitchhike with strangers while others don’t even enjoy a rollercoaster ride? Is there such a thing as scaredy-cat gene or a daredevil brain structure? Or is our level of attraction to danger down to how protective our parents were?

Whether our weakness is extreme sports, speeding, drugs or other dangerous behaviours, it is typically a mix of risk and novelty that draw us in. What psychologists call “novelty seeking” is the preference for the unexpected or new. People with this trait are often impulsive and easily bored – but new experiences release a surge of pleasure chemicals in their brains. A rat or human with preferences for novelty will be more likely to do drugs and binge drink.

̽��ֱ��concepts of risk and novelty are to some extent linked: a new stimulus is inherently more risky in that any associated consequence is unknown. However, we can dissociate these two in the laboratory.

It’s (always) about dopamine

Dopamine, used by neurons to transmit messages to other neurons, is often described as the brain’s “pleasure chemical”. Dopamine cells lie in the mid-brain, deep in the base of the brain, and send “projections” to brain regions where the dopamine molecule is released – such as those involved in the control of action, cognition and reward. Studies have shown that the dopamine system can be activated by rewarding experiences, such as eating, having sex or taking drugs.

In a study of patients with Parkinson’s disease, who were on drugs that stimulated dopamine receptors used to treat their movement symptoms, 17% developed highly unexpected behavioural addictions to gambling or compulsive sexual, shopping or eating behaviours. These patients also sought out risks more, and showed a preference for novelty on lab tests. So it seems that an active dopamine system can make us take more risks.

A study on anticipating risk showed that expecting a win is associated with an increase in brain activity in dopamine regions, whereas expecting a loss is associated with a decrease in such activity. Both drive us to take risk. Wingsuit flying or roller coaster riding are motivated by our expectation of reward – a thrill – but wingsuit flying may also driven by an urge to avoid loss (in this case death). ̽��ֱ��likelihood of a thrill from base jumping or a roller coaster is close to 100%. But while the likelihood of death from a rollercoaster ride is close to 0%, the chances of dying from basejumping are considerably higher. ̽��ֱ��closer to the extremes, 0% or 100%, the more certain, whereas the closer to 50%, the more uncertain.

Dopamine reward pathways in the human brain. Oscar Arias-Carrión1, Maria Stamelou, Eric Murillo-Rodríguez, Manuel Menéndez-González and Ernst Pöppel. - Oscar Arias-Carrión1, Maria Stamelou, Eric Murillo-Rodríguez, Manuel Menéndez-González and Ernst Pöppel., CC BY-SA

Many, but not all, studies have found that people with a certain dopamine receptor are more likely to be thrill seeking. This gene variant is also associated with greater responses to unexpected rewards in the brain, making the unexpected thrill more thrilling. Genetic hardwiring might therefore explain the tendency towards base jumping, linking the preference for novelty and also possibly for risk and reward. But how we are brought up also has an impact. And adolescents are known to be more risk taking, partly because their brains are still developing and they are more susceptible to peer pressure.

And, of course, there may be other reasons why we enjoy bungee jumping or binge drinking than an attraction to risk and novelty. For example, this can happen in social situations where there’s peer pressure for us to conform, or if we are feeling down or stressed.

Why are we inconsistent?

But if our genes can influence whether we’re brave or fearful, how come we are so inconsistent in our behaviour? For example, we may sky dive on holiday yet buy travel insurance.

Have we all got an inner piglet? wikimedia

We act differently based on whether the risk is perceived to gain reward or avoid loss – an effect known as framing. Most of us tend to avoid risky rewards – we’d rather not go sky diving – but in the case of an unlikely event with a high payout such as a lottery ticket, we’re happy to take a risk. We also normally seek risk in order to avoid huge losses. This is affected by how likely it is that the outcome might occur. In the case of an unlikely but possibly very bad outcome, such as the risk of incurring massive debt while hospitalised in a foreign country, we become risk averse and buy travel insurance.

People who enjoy danger or suffer from disorders of addiction have different risk tendencies. Pathological users of illegal drugs, alcohol or food all seek risk in the face of rewards – by going after the high. But those who use illegal drugs are driven by more risky high rewards whereas those that pathologically use alcohol or food are driven by less risky lower rewards.

How likely we are to take risks can also be manipulated. A study in rats showed that risk taking can be reduced by mimicking the dopamine signal providing information about the negative outcomes from previous risky choices – such as a shock to the foot or not receiving food. Risk taking in binge drinkers can also be reduced when they are explicitly exposed to a loss outcome – such as experiencing a loss of money rather than just expecting it. A night in an emergency room may therefore be enough to change their behaviour.

Also, a new and unexpected context can increase risk-taking behaviours, which could explain why we are more likely to take risks on holiday. In a recent study, my colleagues and I showed participants a series of faces – familiar or unknown ones – and asked them to choose between a risky gamble or a safe choice. When shown a new face, subjects were more likely to take the risky gamble. ̽��ֱ��study showed that those with greater brain activity in the striatum, a region involved in dopamine release, to the new face made greater risky choices. These findings suggest that novelty increases dopamine release in this area of the brain, which then possibly enhances the expectation of reward.

But being drawn to danger isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Our society needs both risk takers and risk avoiders to function. We need those that push boundaries – to set up camp on Mars or rescue people from fires – and we need those that write the rules and enforce regulations to keep society functioning.

Valerie Voon, Honorary Consultant Neuropsychiatrist and Senior Clinical Research Associate, Department of Psychiatry, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Valerie Voon (Department of Psychiatry) discusses what makes some people want to base jump off a cliff, while others don’t even enjoy a rollercoaster ride.

Kontizas Dimitrios

BASE Jumping from Sapphire Tower, Istanbul

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Opinion: There’s no such thing as a natural-born gambler

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Apr 2016 15:04:35 +0000

̽��ֱ��fight to recruit online gamblers in the UK is at fever pitch. If you googled “play live blackjack” in March, it cost an advertiser £148.51 to be the first ad that came up. In fact, 77 of March’s top 100 most expensive keywords were about gambling. With this relentless clamour to grab attention, you might think gambling was hardwired into human nature; that we were doomed to cave in to the enticements of bookmakers and casinos.

In truth, huge swathes of the planet just didn’t gamble. No cards, no dice, not even a coin flip, and we’re not talking about a thousand years ago either; in some areas it is just 50 years since gambling arrived. We can say with confidence that 150 years ago betting on contests was absent from the indigenous peoples of most of South America, almost all of Australia, most of the Pacific Islands including the vast islands comprising New Guinea and New Zealand, most Inuit and Siberian peoples, and a great many peoples of southern Africa.

My own fieldwork in Highland Papua New Guinea showed the introduction of gambling occurred in the 1950s – in other words, within living memory. If whole populations don’t or didn’t gamble, well it can’t very well be a universal human trait. So why didn’t they?

Those looking for an easy answer would say that these people were isolated and marginal, but we know that was not the case at all. For instance, there have been huge polities spanning the Amazon, and trade networks that bridged the Pacific well before Captain Cook. How easy it would have been to pick up some dice, or make them when you got home.

On a roll. Christa Lohman/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

Risk aversion

You might well counter that these people were just isolated from “us”. In fact, contact with the West and the presence of gambling just don’t correlate.

But lets say that non-gamblers were too far removed from the great gambling traditions to pick it up directly, despite the evidence. ̽��ֱ��enormous variety of gambling and the breadth of forms it has taken across the world both in the past and today strongly suggests that gambling is not a hard idea to invent. ̽��ֱ��real question should therefore be why was gambling not worth inventing or adopting? Under what conditions is gambling a silly idea?

Another piece of common wisdom says that gambling is more prevalent among people who face greater risk in their lives, but this is not the answer either. While the correlation holds for some people in some countries that already gamble, many of the peoples who didn’t gamble at all had a far riskier time of things than peoples who do.

So there is nothing innate about gambling that simply must bubble to the surface, but this doesn’t mean gambling addiction is not real or serious either. Many of those indigenous peoples who once didn’t gamble now have very high levels of problem gambling. It is one thing to say gambling is not in our genes, and quite another to say that some people aren’t predisposed to develop a dependency on gambling when it is around them.

Gambling… Summer Fete style. David Edwards/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

If it wasn’t isolation, and it wasn’t lack of risk, or lack of imagination, why have many of us gambled so much while many others who didn’t at all have now taken it up so quickly? Simple. We have money and a stratified society with a lot of economic inequality and they didn’t.

Easy money

Money may seem a self-evident thing, but it is surprisingly hard to make a hard and fast distinction between what we all know to be money and things like shell currencies. Like money itself, its definition can easily slip through our fingers. What people who have adopted money tell anthropologists, however, is that what matters is that money has more uses, is more portable, more easily hidden, and easier to spend. Many people in those societies that were new to money took up gambling as a way to access or direct this slippery new kind of wealth.

Inequality is another good indicator for gambling, both statistically and on the ground. Where I did my fieldwork, gambling arrived with the return of the first migrant labourers, young men who, along with a knowledge of gambling, brought back what seemed like huge wealth, and who had the potential to upend traditional hierarchies.

As with so many non-gambling societies, it was new inequalities that made gambling seem a good idea for some. And for all its problems, one has to admit that it is a very exploratory, profound way to engage with money. In gambling, by mutual agreement, players pit their monies against each other, making less into more (or more into less) while cutting out the laborious market system. This also explains why Mao Tse-Tung and the leaders of so many other communist (read anti-inequality) uprisings made banning gambling a first priority.

Turning in his grave.. Steven Woodward/Flickr

Joining the game

What does all this tell us about our lust for online gambling, which seems so lucrative for Google as well as the betting firms? We have been gambling for a long time, long enough for it to seep into our collective psyche and appear completely natural, but as recently as medieval times our kings blamed our gambling on French influence.

We have gone through fits and spurts of gambling, but probably the most important was in the 17th century, when mercantilism upset the economic order of the day, while new forms of accurate measurement and a more widespread currency system spurred us to think more in numbers, bending our minds towards gambling.

It is certainly profitable for the gambling industry that we think of ourselves as a nation of instinctive gamblers. But think again. That the risk taker in us becomes an online gambler tells us much more about how we internalise present day economic inequality and the way technology makes money ever easier to spend than it does about our animal instincts.

Anthony J. Pickles, Research Fellow in Anthropology at Trinity College, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

̽��ֱ��opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

Anthony Pickles (Division of Social Anthropology) discusses why gambling is a relatively modern invention.

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Scientists identify part of brain linked to gambling addiction

jfp40 — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 08:02:36 +0000

̽��ֱ��research, led by Dr Luke Clark from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, was published on April 7 2014 in the journal PNAS.

During gambling games, people often misperceive their chances of winning due to a number of errors of thinking called cognitive distortions. For example, ‘near-misses’ seem to encourage further play, even though they are no different from any other loss. In a random sequence like tossing a coin, a run of one event (heads) makes people think the other outcome (tails) is due next; this is known as the ‘gambler’s fallacy’.

There is increasing evidence that problem gamblers are particularly prone to these erroneous beliefs. In this study, the researchers examined the neurological basis of these beliefs in patients with injuries to different parts of the brain.

“While neuroimaging studies can tell us a great deal about the brain’s response to complex events, it’s only by studying patients with brain injury that we can see if a brain region is actually needed to perform a given task,” said Dr Clark.

For the study, the researchers gave patients with injuries to specific parts of the brain (the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, or the insula) two different gambling tasks: a slot machine game that delivered wins and ‘near-misses’ (like a cherry one position from the jackpot line), and a roulette game involving red or black predictions, to elicit the gambler’s fallacy. For the control groups, they also had patients with injuries to other parts of the brain as well as healthy participants undergo the gambling tasks.

All of the groups with the exception of the patients with insula damage reported a heightened motivation to play following near-misses in the slot machine game, and also fell prey to the gambler’s fallacy in the roulette game.

Clark added: “Based on these results, we believe that the insula could be hyperactive in problem gamblers, making them more susceptible to these errors of thinking. Future treatments for gambling addiction could seek to reduce this hyperactivity, either by drugs or by psychological techniques like mindfulness therapies.”

Gambling is a widespread activity: 73% of people in the UK report some gambling involvement in the past year* and around 50% play games other than the National Lottery. For a small proportion of players (around 1-5%), their gambling becomes excessive, resulting in features seen in addiction. Problem gambling is associated with both debt and family difficulties as well as other mental health problems like depression.

*2010 British Gambling Prevalence Survey

New research reveals that brain damage affecting the insula – an area with a key role in emotions – disrupts errors of thinking linked to gambling addiction.

Based on these results, we believe that the insula could be hyperactive in problem gamblers, making them more susceptible to errors of thinking.

Dr Luke Clark

John Ryan

Kings Down

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New study reveals scale of problem gambling among homeless population

jfp40 — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 09:21:19 +0000

̽��ֱ��study – one of the largest surveys of gambling and homelessness ever undertaken in the UK – provides new insight into a rarely studied problem and suggests homeless services should offer clients more support to identify and tackle problem gambling.

Although homelessness and problem gambling are two public health concerns, they are rarely considered together. This new study – published in the Journal of Gambling Studies – interviewed 450 people at homeless hostels and shelters in the London Borough of Westminster.

According to lead author Steve Sharman from the Department of Psychology: “Many issues face the homeless population, including drug and alcohol use. In terms of addiction research, most focus has been on drugs, alcohol and smoking, but the gambling field is relatively small in comparison. And while it is possible to spot physiological indicators of drug and alcohol addiction, problem gambling is much harder to identify.”

Finding out more about gambling addiction is important at a time when gambling opportunities are wider than ever. “Gambling has exploded in popularity over the past 20 years, partly due to changes in legislation but also because of new technology,” said Sharman.

“Where previous generations were limited to betting shops and football pools, today there’s everything from online slots to in-play betting. That means people can gamble 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the more people who gamble, the more people there will be who do so problematically.”

Together with researchers at Kings College London, the National Problem Gambling Clinic, ̽��ֱ��Connection @ St Martins and other centres in Westminster, Sharman spoke to over 450 homeless people in London.

He assessed levels of problem gambling using a standard clinical diagnostic tool called the Problem Gambling Severity Index. He then compared the results with data from the British Gambling Prevalence Survey.

Compared with the UK population as a whole, where problem gambling affects 0.7% of people, the level of problem gambling among homeless people was 11.6%. “We found that the rate of problem or pathological gambling is significantly higher in the homeless population than the general population,” he said.

In identifying the significant scale of the problem, the study could pave the way to developing new services for the homeless.

“ ̽��ֱ��results are useful because some homeless services don’t ask about gambling in their initial assessments. By showing that this population is vulnerable to gambling addiction, the study should encourage homeless services to include questions about gambling in their assessments. If they can understand the full range of behavioural problems their clients face – not only substance abuse – then they will be able to provide more comprehensive services,” said Sharman.

̽��ֱ��next stage of the project will be to unpick the direction of the link between gambling and homelessness – whether gambling is a cause or consequence of homelessness – the links between gambling and alcohol and drug use, and look at so-called negative life events.

“By giving us an indication of life events that precede homelessness and came afterwards, we will get a better understanding of the causes, and whether people start gambling after becoming homeless or became homeless as a result of gambling,” he said.

“Regardless of whether gambling is a cause or a consequence, recognising and addressing this problem will hopefully give affected individuals a better chance of getting off – and more importantly staying off – the streets.”

Homeless people are ten times more likely to be problem gamblers than the UK population as a whole, researchers at Cambridge have found.

Recognising and addressing this problem will hopefully give affected individuals a better chance of getting off – and more importantly staying off – the streets

Steve Sharman

Photographer: Gavin Mills Supplied by ̽��ֱ��Connection at St Martin's

On the street

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̽��ֱ��psychology of gambling

tdk25 — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Gambling is a thriving form of entertainment in the UK, but may also become a form of addiction for some individuals. Just why do people gamble when ‘the house always wins’? Advances in brain imaging techniques are helping Cambridge scientists find out.

Gambling has been a popular source of entertainment for many centuries and across many cultures. With current changes in gambling legislation in the UK, its popularity looks set to continue. New casinos are to be established, including a large ‘super-casino’, and novel forms of gambling like internet gambling and electronic gaming machines are flourishing. Some argue these changes are a good thing: gambling is a recreational activity enjoyed by around 70% of the British public at least annually, and the gambling industry is a useful source of taxable revenue.

But all this comes at a cost – for a minority of individuals, gambling is a spiralling habit that they become unable to control. Problem (or ‘pathological’) gambling is a recognised psychiatric diagnosis present in around 1% of the population. These prevalence rates are higher in local communities around gambling facilities, and clinicians are concerned that the relaxation of British legislation will increase the incidence of problem gambling in years to come.

Against the odds

At its heart, gambling is a rather paradoxical behaviour because it is widely known that ‘the house always wins’. Whether you are gambling on fruit machines, horseracing, blackjack or roulette, the odds will have been meticulously arranged to ensure a steady profit for the casino or bookmaker. ̽��ֱ��only way to achieve this is for the gambler to make a steady loss. So why do gamblers, and particularly problem gamblers, continue to play when the overwhelming likelihood is that they will lose money?

Dr Luke Clark, in the Department of Experimental Psychology, is interested in the different ways in which gamblers over-estimate their chances of winning, including the effects of near-misses and personal choice. These features of gambling games promote an ‘illusion of control’: the belief that the gambler can exert skill over an outcome that is actually defined by chance.

Imaging the gambling brain

Recent advances in brain imaging technology are helping scientists to understand how these features of gambling games are so effective in maintaining continued play. At the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, Dr Clark is using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure patterns of brain activity while volunteers perform a gambling game.

Previous research has shown a reliable pattern of brain activity when humans receive monetary wins. In particular, a region called the striatum, near the centre of the brain, is a crucial component in a reward circuit that also responds to natural reinforcers like food and sexual stimuli, as well as drugs of abuse like cocaine. In ongoing research, Dr Clark is measuring activity in this reward circuit as volunteers experience near-misses and choice effects during a gambling task.

Hallmarks of addiction

Both near-misses and personal choice cause gamblers to play for longer and to place larger bets. Over time, these distorted perceptions of one’s chances of winning may precipitate ‘loss chasing’, where gamblers continue to play in an effort to recoup accumulating debts. Loss chasing is one of the hallmarks of problem gambling, which actually bears much resemblance to drug addiction. Problem gamblers also experience cravings and symptoms of withdrawal when denied the opportunity to gamble.

In addition to an array of psychological factors, problem gambling may also have some important biological determinants. ̽��ֱ��brain chemical dopamine is known to play a key role in drug addiction and may also be abnormally regulated in problem gambling. Patients with Parkinson’s disease, who show degeneration of dopamine cells, can sometimes show a sudden interest in gambling, linked to their use of medications that increase dopamine transmission. Other systems in the brain are also critical, particularly the part of the frontal lobes immediately above the eye sockets, known as the orbitofrontal cortex.

Following damage to the orbitofrontal region, neurosurgical patients often show changes in their judgment and risk-taking. One patient, examined at the ̽��ֱ�� of Iowa, made a series of disastrous decisions involving extravagant business ventures and dubious personal relationships after having a tumour removed from his orbitofrontal cortex. In a collaborative study with Dr Antoine Bechara at the ̽��ֱ�� of Southern California, Dr Clark is measuring betting behaviour in a group of similar patients with damage in this region, using a simple gambling task. More subtle chemical imbalances in this brain region may accompany the transition from regular gambling to problem gambling.

Help for problem gamblers?

By further understanding the breakdown of self-control in gamblers, this programme of research carries important implications for the treatment of problem gambling, using both pharmacological and psychological therapies. Moreover, the development of objective tasks of gambling will provide more valid outcome measures for assessing the effectiveness of new treatments. By understanding how subtle features of gambling games, like near-misses and personal choice, are linked to the addictiveness of these games, future changes in gambling legislation may be in a better position to protect vulnerable individuals.

Promoting an illusion of control

Near-missesoccur when the outcome is close to the jackpot, but there is no actual win. Near-misses are common in many forms of gambling, such as when your chosen horse finishes in second place in a horserace. A moderate frequency of near-misses encourages prolonged gambling, even in student volunteers who do not gamble on a regular basis. Problem gamblers often interpret near-misses as evidence that they are mastering the game and that a win is on the way.

Personal choiceis a further determinant of illusory control, referring to situations where the gambler has some responsibility in arranging their gamble. As an example, roulette players will place higher bets if they can throw the ball onto the roulette wheel themselves, compared with if the croupier throws the ball for them. Lottery players often prefer a number sequence they have selected themselves, and may refuse to exchange their ticket for several tickets of random numbers. Choice appears to encourage a belief that the game involves skill when in fact the outcome is entirely random.

For more information, please go towww.psychol.cam.ac.uk/BCNIor contact the author Dr Luke Clarklc260@cam.ac.uk

Gambling is a thriving form of entertainment in the UK, but may also become a form of addiction for some individuals. Just why do people gamble when &lsquo;the house always wins&rsquo;? Advances in brain imaging techniques are helping Cambridge scientists find out.

Gambling games promote an ‘illusion of control’: the belief that the gambler can exert skill over an outcome that is actually defined by chance.

Dr Luke Clark

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Changing Luck for the Better

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