Researchers identify brain region that influences gambling decisions

By Staff Writer

A new study has revealed the brain activity that may explain irrational decision-making by gamblers.

According to the study, which appears in the Journal of Neuroscience, some gamblers exhibit differences in the brain region called the dorsal striatum, which is associated with motivational processes and learning behavior.

Researchers asked 31 participants to complete four roulette-wheel tasks while being monitored by magnetic resonance imaging. In each round, volunteers were asked to choose a color on a tri-colored spinning wheel. They were rewarded two euros if the ball landed on their color, and they were charged a half euro each round regardless of the outcome.

The dorsal striatum was more active when participants used reinforcement-learning principles, which was when they chose a color because it had won a lot recently, compared to gambler's fallacy, which is when participants chose a color because it had not won in previous rounds.

Researchers concluded that both motivations were irrational because one of the colors on the wheel covered more spaces than the other two. Only eight of the 31 participants used rational reasoning, which was choosing the color that covered the largest area.

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