Rats Could Provide Breakthrough for Curing Gambling Addiction

Gambling addiction could soon be cured thanks to our furry little friend, the rat.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia were able to successfully reduce compulsive gambling in rats with a drug treatment.  They published their findings in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

Humans encounter a triggering of compulsive and often destructive repetition when in the casino environment and winning, or nearly winning, at slot machines.  Researcher Paul Cocker placed his rats in a similar environment in order to demonstrate the rodents exhibiting the same tendency.  They, too, sought a reward for a "two-cherry" loss almost as often as for a "three-cherry" win, the study revealed.

Cocker used drugs that targeted the D4 dopamine receptor, thus increasing and decreasing the rats’ compulsion to push the reward lever upon encountering a near miss. 

“Our study is the first to show that by blocking these receptors, we might be able to reduce the rewarding aspects of near misses that appear to be important in gambling,” Cocker asserted.

“The rats are great at recognizing clear wins when all three lights are illuminated and they are great at recognizing when there is no chance of winning, but the ones in between — when there are more cherries — the animals have a higher expectation of reward.

“It’s the same thing we see in human gamblers,” he said. “You can talk to compulsive slot machine players and they will tell you that a win is a win and a loss is a loss; they know it intellectually.

“But in studies using scanners looking at responses in the brains of gamblers, a win and a near miss show a big overlap, using very similar neural circuitry. Something to do with the expectation of reward gets usurped in pathological gamblers.”

The study sought to determine which portion of the brain is responsible for gambling addiction. 

by looking at related structures involved with pleasure, reward and addiction.

“Pathological gambling is increasingly seen as a behavioural addiction similar to drug or alcohol addiction, but we know comparatively little about how to treat problem gambling,” said Cocker.

Recent studies suggest that Dopamine drugs used in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease sometimes induce gambling addiction. 

Further research is required before finding a cure for gambling addiction, the team stressed.

- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com