Hijacking the brain: Gambling Disorder
How would you feel if you could not take control your actions? You’ve probably had this moment in your life when the desire was stronger than the reason, a moment when it was just too difficult to resist the impulse. Just imagine this happening every single day of your life. This, is what addiction feels like.
When people hear about addiction, they normally think about drug addiction. However, this text is not about drug addiction but another addiction that has twice its prevalence, affecting 100 million people worldwide. I am going to be writing about Gambling Addiction. More specifically, the neuroscience behind Gambling Addiction.
Through the years there has been a lot of resarch in drug abuse. However, Gambling addiction has remained in the shadows. Although it is accepted as an addicive disorder, there is little consensus on what are the underlying neurobiological mechanisms affected. Part of the reason is its recent inclusion in the DSM-5, the most famous reference book on mental health and brain-related conditions and disorders.
It’s time gambling addiction were studied in more detail. My research on Gambling addiction focuses on investigating several aspects of the brain (such as function, structure, molecules, lesions) in order to get a complete picture of the disorder.
Suprisingly, the results for now are looking quite similar to those in drug addiction. This makes me question many things of the nature of addiction. There is the possibility that regardless of how you get addicted to something, you always get the same brain changes characteristic of the disease, leading to this compulsive uncontrollable behavior that only leads to one direction. It is surprising to think that highly addictive drugs such as methamphetamine can create the same changes in the brain than just playing a game. However, this game has certain conditions in order for it to be addictive:
- Needs to have a quick reward
- Needs to be easy to play
- Needs to give intermittent rewards, so you don’t always get the price, only a very limited amount of times, and with different amounts
- Needs to be accessible
From those points, there is one in particular that worries me, and it is the last one. Gambling is not restricted to going to e.g., a casino anymore. Rather, gambling is easily accessible through the internet. This increases the accessibility of gambling not only in a geographical scale, but also in an age scale: in order to become addicted, the individual needs to create a habit, and there is nothing better for creating a habit than time. If underaged children already have access to those online platforms, it is easier for their brains to get adapted through time, leading to a brain that is prone to look for quick and easy rewards. In addition, gambling companies are being advertised in public places, such as stadiums, buildings, or even ferries! All these factors combined create the perfect scenario for an increase in the incidence of Gambling addiction throught the world.
This is also a shoutout to other people interested in neuroscience to raise their interest in this field and finally find a cure for this devastating disorder.
Hopefully, after my research is finished, we will be able to confirm the affected brain areas in gamblers, which we can then apply treatments to, breaking the cycle and finally changing life for the 100 million people affected.
Albert Bellmunt Gil
The writer is a Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Clinical Medicine.