The Principal Investigator

For some, coming in second place holds no higher rank than that of the first-place loser. But, a growing amount of evidence suggests gamblers see second place through rose-colored lenses. For them, betting on a horse that comes in second at the race track isn’t perceived as a loss but as a victory just out of grasp.

A study appearing today (2.11.09) in Neuron points to familiar reward pathways in the brain as the culprits guiding gamblers to mistake near-misses (ie. coming in second place) for wins, which may perpetuate gambling addiction.

“Our findings show that the brain responds to near-misses as if a win has been delivered, even though the result is technically a loss,” University of Cambridge neuroscientist Luke Clark said in a press release.

To bring the casino to the lab, Clark’s team at the University of Cambridge first recruited a group of college students who liked gambling to play a computerized two-reel slot machine game. Forty players received 60 chances at the game, and each win (matching icons) earned .50 Euros (roughly 65 cents in U.S. currency). At random, participants were given the opportunity to choose the winning icon; in the others, the computer chose for them.

Unbeknownst to the participants, the scientists manipulated the outcome of the game so that 1/6 trials ended in a win and 2/6 near-miss outcomes (the matching icon was one slot away from the payline). Before each play the gamblers assessed how good they felt about their odds of winning, and afterward, how good they felt about the outcome and wanted to play again.

As reported in previous studies, when the gamblers were given control over their gamble by having the opportunity to predict the winning icon, they reported feeling more positive about their odds compared to the times when the computer selected for them. Though the gamblers reported the near-misses as less pleasurable than the full-misses, near-misses drove the players to want to play the game more in cases where they felt in control of their gamble.

In a second test, 15 different participants played the slot-machine game while scientists monitored their brain activity using function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In the cases where the gamblers won or experienced the near-misses the fRMI recorded higher activity in the ventral striatum and anterior insula, two regions implicated in the processing of rewards and known to be key players in addiction.

Players who reported a higher propensity toward gambling and desire to keep playing that game after near-miss outcomes also displayed higher activity in the insula.

“Based on the present findings, we hypothesize excessive insula recruitment during gambling may be a risk factor for cognitive distortion and loss-chasing that are characteristics of problem (compulsive) gambling,” the study authors write. “By linking psychological and neurobiological accounts of gambling, these data inform our understanding of gambling behavior within society, and by extrapolation, the capacity of gambling to become addictive and pathological.”