Researchers Discover How Brain is 'Turned On' by Online Gambling
An article in this week's issue of Science magazine reports that UCLA psychologists have discovered how the brain evaluates the possibility of winning versus losing when making gambling decisions.Researchers studied UCLA students in their twenties. The kids were given $30 and then asked whether they would agree to each of more than 250 gambling moves in which they had a 50-50 chance of winning an amount of money. As the 16 participants considered the wagers, they were scanned by a functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) scanner at the university's Ahmanson–Lovelace Brain Mapping Center. Scientists studied the students' brain activity; the technique uses magnetic fields to spot active brain areas by increases in blood oxygen.
Scientists asked participants if they would strongly agree to the gamble, accept it, refuse it or strongly reject it. The students were not told if they had won or lost until after they left the FMRI. After that, the researchers selected three of the gambles. If the students had agreed to accept the terms, the researchers tossed a coin and the students either won or lost the money. What interested the scientists was the activity of the brain's decision making process, not the student's reaction upon losing, or winning.
Most gamblers, if offered 50 percent chance of winning $19, would generally risk losing $10. That figure, however, varied widely. One gambler needed the chance to win $60 to risk losing $10, while another needed only the chance to win $11 to risk losing $10. The researchers could predict people's "tolerance to risk" by scanning their brain patterns.
"Looking at how your brain responds to potential gains versus potential losses, we can predict how risk-averse you are going to be in your choices," said Russell Poldrack, UCLA associate professor of psychology.
Individual differences in brain activity correspond very closely to individual differences in participants' actual choices, said Craig Fox, an associate professor of policy at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and an associate professor of psychology. "The people who show much more neural sensitivity to losses relative to gains are the same people who are very reluctant to gamble
Thinking about the possibility of winning money turns on some of the same areas of the brain that are activated when people eat chocolate or look at a beautiful woman's face, Poldrack said.
The researchers studied which parts of the brain became more active or less active as the amount of money participants could win or lose increased.
The researchers also found that reward centers in the brain respond not only when we actually receive rewards but also when we make decisions about potential rewards, and that when we make decisions, the reward circuitry in the brain is more sensitive to possible losses than to possible gains.
The research is federally funded by the National Science Foundation.
What happens in our brain when we think about potentially losing money? Some of the same areas that get turned on when we think about winning money get turned off when we think about losing.
One interesting finding is that as the amount of a potential loss increases, the parts of the brain that process fear or anxiety, such as the amygdala or the insula, are not activated.
"You don't turn anything up. You turn down the reward areas of the brain, and you turn them down more strongly for losses than you turn them up for gains. Just as people respond more strongly to a $100 potential loss than a $100 potential gain, the brain responds more strongly to a $100 potential loss versus a $100 potential gain," said Podrack.
According to Sabrina Tom, a UCLA research assistant in psychology and lead author of the study, people who have the most deactivation in the reward pathways were also the most loss-averse.
A woman in a bad marriage, Tom said, is not likely to leave unless she has prospects that are much better than what she has.
"She's probably not going to leave for something that's only moderately better," Tom said. "She needs to know it's going to be a lot better before giving up what she already has."
The people who were most willing to gamble were least turned on as the stakes got higher. unless they are offered extremely favorable gambles. The people who are about as sensitive to losses as gains neurologically are the ones who are more willing to gamble," said Fox.
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