The Impact of Gambling on the Reward System - Term Paper Example

Pleasure and the Brain: The Impact of Gambling on the Reward System Introduction The pursuit of happiness is one aspect of human lives and stretches thousands of years with a recurrent pattern that sums up the shudders of anticipatory pleasure. Man's everyday undertakings involve induced motives towards certain objectives considered rewarding. With reference to the topic at hand, the term “reward” refers to the environmental stimuli with the effect of instigating definite responses (White, 1998). For users, the sight of alcohol, for instance, elicits a sensation of a kind: the warmth, the vision, the clarity, the relief, and the general feel-good effect with a seemingly real fix that leaves the user in a perfect, anticipated high. Obscure to these lot is the fact that objects of abuse, often readily available in form of commonly grown plant products known for ages or interactive events, act through the extra ordinary complex brain mechanism, fine-tuned with communication network of delicate, specialized neurons that basically govern thoughts, perceptions and/or emotions. Whether heroin, cocaine, whiskey or any other social activity such as gambling [deemed appealing for recreational use], all work progressively in amounts used; it takes a little more quantity to produce the same euphoric effect experienced previously, to which Blum et al. (1996) refers to as the Reward Deficiency Syndrome (RDS). This paper endeavors to delineate brain mechanism of addiction with explicit pass-over on the understanding of the anatomic, adaptive pathways involved in the pathological gamblers’ brain circuitry. Gambling and the Brain Reward Circuitry Adequate behavior demands a continuously coordinated approach to individual actions, particularly when engaged in activities with elements of risk. Behavior scholars have long resisted the notion that behaviors are occasionally conditioned by subjective experiences. Specifically, their description of the relationship between behavior and the external factors were often in external terms without due reference to internal biological processes; even though it does help a food deprived animal such as man to classify food as a definite reward for his daily accomplishments. With their operant conditioning theory, two fundamental principles of behavior are engendered—reinforcement [either positively or negatively] and punishment [in form of a deficit]. Reinforcement, in this sense, involves some form of stimulus events, which increases response rates either to receive a reward or prompts escape from the possibility of a stimulus being taken away. Punishment, on the other hand, does the exact opposite; suppressing a behavior. New, advanced neurobiological research, however, projects a different perspective, detailing scientific processes through which an augmented brain’s reward system may ultimately alter behavior. Research in this area indicates that repeated gambling just like the use of drugs such as cocaine, for example, changes the structural functioning of the brain specialized cells through adaptive pleasurable effects that lasts from days into years within the system, eventually spiraling into pervasive addiction. According to Blum et al. (2000), the insufficient feelings of satisfaction [craving] for most of the drugs/activities commonly abused results from a distortion in the “brain reward cascade”; a complex interaction of the dopaminergic and opiodergic neurotransmitters. Individuals born into families with deep running history of addictions are highly susceptible to a deficient production and/or subsequent use of these neurotransmitters. Accordingly, a prolonged exposure corrupts the functioning of these neurotransmitters by blocking them from reaching other brain receptors. There is no doubt that nutrition and breeding, the two crucial qualities of life on earth have been preserved over the ages in the evolutionary calendar. Fundamental to the continuity of these behavioral aspects of life from one generation to the next has been the brain reward circuitry (Durrant et al., 2009). It is interesting to note that though ubiquitously seen to be of little benefit with far reaching consequences in certain cases, natural selection that is part and parcel of the evolutionary processes over the ages has preserved and carried along non-beneficial behaviors (Berridge & Kringelbach, 2008). Abused drugs directly activate via the reward signaling effect in the brain via exceedingly mimicked signals of natural rewards. As a result, the brain reward system deceptively interprets and incorporates the signals in the brain reward circuitry as highly rewarding and essential for survival. Just like abused drugs, gambling has a long history, both timely and culturally, with clear indications of predilection that abuses the brain system into conditionality of survival. Indeed as Durrant et al., 2009 concurs, the often limited resources directly challenging long-term sustenance, short-term benefits actually drive gambling as a survival mechanism. Historically, addictions have been known to involve some form of pharmacologically acting agents such as those already mentioned. The characteristics exhibited by the pharmacological substances are, however, not exclusive for these substances alone. Non-drug addictions share the many of the psychological and behavioral patterns that extends well into impaired behavioral control, withdrawal, and obsessive tolerance in total disregard of devastating consequences (Olsen, 2011). Though considered as a form of socialization activity with virtually no or minimal biological harm, gambling have severely wrecked many lives, interfering with family finances, relations and mental status; a maladaptive impulse control disorder commonly referred to as pathological gambling (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). The associated comorbidities and clinical manifestations resemble the after-observations of abused substance (Potenza, 2001). Affected individuals, estimated to between 1-5 percent of the adult population, mostly spends their time risking resources in increasing amounts and/or chasing after loses with considerable attempts to conceal their involvements (Schaffer, Hall, & Vander Bilt, 1999). Extensive research in slot machine gambling confirms the extreme compulsive potential (Dowling, Smith, & Thomas, 2005). Not surprisingly, scientific research has established association of problem gambling with several psychiatric comorbidities such a substance use disorders, impulsivity, antisocial personality as well as the neurological Parkinson’s disease (Ambermoon, et al., 2011). Nonetheless, pathological gambling is, according phenomenological evidence, a standalone neurological disorder even without the association (van Holst, et al., 2010). From the perspective of the reward circuitry, the anticipatory possibility of a monetary reward jumps certain areas of the brain into action. Essentially, gambling is a game of the nervous system exploiting specific hiccups in the brain. Modern neuroscientists are at par with discoveries that not only maps out particular patterns of irresistible activities at the gambling table, but digs deep into financial-risk decisions pondered in advance. Gambling, much like addictive drugs, hijacks the brain's pleasure centers with the allure of basicity in survival. The manipulation of neural circuits by gambling originally evolved out of an experimental study conducted to determine a rhesus monkey’s assessment of rewarding stimuli [fruit juice, to be specific], which is crucial for survival (Schultz, Dayan, & Montague, 1997). Noteworthy, dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in controlling the brain reward circuitry was the hallmark of the entire study. With experimental activities spanning over two decades, Wolfram Schultz endeavored much in exposing how the dopamine neurons in the monkeys’ brain reward circuitry operates on a molecular level. Using a simple protocol of flashing a light, waiting for a moment, and eventually squeezing a few juice drops right into the monkeys' mouths, Schultz and colleagues painstakingly monitored and discovered a patterned response of dopamine neurons in the brain. According to the experiment, games of chance prey on the neural system, altering the dopaminergic pathways with “rewarding behaviors” that trigger the release of dopamine- the chemical influencing pleasure feelings. The reaction is, however, activated after the receipt of the first reward [juice-drops]. Interestingly, the release of the dopamine neurons occurs not only after the delivery of the juice drops, but also follows the conditioned stimulus that predicts such a delivery, thus shifting a portion of the signaling cells [prediction neurons] towards the registration and the subsequent mastery of the predictive stimulus [flash light] and not the reward itself (Schultz, et al., 1997). The patterned observation, however, changes course when the usual routine is broken-the non-arrival of an expected reward after a flash light. The monkey not only gets disappointed, but also does register the delivery failure and matches it appropriately with a future prediction. Despite the registered disappointed leading to a change of prediction, an unexpected reward [arrival of juice without known/usual coded criteria] causes a much larger reaction of the dopamine neurons than any of the previously mentioned effects. Fiorillo, et al. (2003) summarized the findings noting that the magnitude of the signal aroused by the predictive reward stimulus depends on the likelihood of the expected reward, so much to the extent that the effect is greatest when a reward arrives unexpectedly; a scenario relevant in the context of games of chance [such as gambling]. A recent study by Dixon et al. (2013) investigating slot machines fitted with ringing bells constructed carefully to release winning sounds in the ambient noise environments characterized in casinos [just like the flash light in the above mentioned study] confirms the activation of the brain cells in increasing the intent for participation and/or anticipation of future rewards, particularly after a lucky shot. Though seemingly impossible to predict, the brain’s dopamine neurons of a pathological gambler strives to decode the logic of luck in anticipation of a reward, yet nothing of a patterned outcome can ever match arbitrary digits of a slot machine. In fact, the laborious predictive coding of rewards by the dopamine neurons is a waste of mental energy; a perspective that oftentimes is not under consideration, at least for pathological gamblers. To be sure, random [unexpected] rewards of gambling are much more enticing than the predictable successes. In their research using the Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans of pathological gamblers’ brain reward circuitry, researchers at the Amsterdam Institute for Addiction Research concurs with the findings of Dixon and colleagues, that pathological gamblers do have a higher activation of the brain reward system when expectant of potential successes compared to non-addicted gamblers (van Holst et al., 2012). Dixon et al. (2013) in their study further notes that majority of slot machine gamblers prefers sessions where wins are accompanied by winning sounds; a confirmation that wining sounds not only make gambling sessions arousing, but are also pleasurable. The result of individuals’ overexposure to games of chance such as gambling is complete immersed conditioning of the brain cells into a feeling of proximity to figuring out slot machine winning patterns, which of course never happens in a gambler’s lifetime. For the obsessive gamblers, the misplaced expectations of their dopamine neurons become self-destructive (Harrigan, et al., 2012). Conclusion It is clear that gambling is an addictive disorder, and becomes pathological with hypersensitivity of the motivational systems within the brain reward circuitry. Adduced evidence indicates that addictive related cues attract and may subsequently arrest and distort individuals’ attention to more rewarding stimuli necessary for survival; a phenomenon referred to as “attentional bias” in the realms of scientific academia (Field & Cox, 2008). Noteworthy, cue reactivity of pathological gamblers spreads almost en mass to the motivational processing and cognitive control areas of the brain namely the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, amygdala and the basal ganglia (Goudriaan, et al., 2010); an intriguing finding describing the diminished responsivity in persons diagnosed with substance dependence. The diminished reward sensitivity/responsivity widely studied in pathological gamblers, apparently, drives them into seeking higher rewards, which depends chiefly on luck and not any other patterned outcome. The higher reactivity of the brain reward circuitry, particular when upbeat of a prospective win, explains the attraction of gambling for problem gamblers. Moreover, the brain of a pathological gambler activate more during the expectation phase way before the actual engagement in gambling, a situation rightly associated with intense, urgent and/or abnormal craving, thus the increased propensity to gamble with whatever little resources in their possession heedless of the punishing nature the activity. From the numerous neurocognitive studies on impulsivity to the recent event-related potential (ERP) study on decision making in pathological gamblers by Hewig J., et al. 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