SPUR Project

2010 winner (15 of 19)

The behavioural neuroscience of gambling addiction: an investigation of fundamental associative learning processes in the development and maintenance of gambling behaviour

Supervisors: Dr Rachel Horsley, Dr Christine Norman (Psychology)

Excessive gambling is a prevalent behaviour in modern society and has been argued to stem from a common biological reward mechanism that underpins other addictions such as substance abuse. Unlike substance abuse however, much less is known about behavioural neuroscience underpinning the development and maintenance of gambling addiction. The aim of the project is to explore the conditions in which associative learning can give rise to gambling behaviour and the conditions that influence the maintenance of such behaviour. The SPUR student will be involved in recruiting study participants and running and analysing the results from a series of computer–based neuropsychological experiments that have been already been developed by the project coordinators using e-prime software, including partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE), the Pavlovian-Instrumental Transfer task (PIT) and the widely used IOWA gambling Task used as a baseline for quantifying gambling behaviour. They will also administer a series of psychometric scales in order to control for co-morbid disorders such as substance abuse. These tasks have been developed with specific focus on their future use in functional magnetic resonance imaging studies which will follow up the SPUR project and explore the neural correlates of associative learning in relation to gambling behaviour.