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   Compulsive Gamblers Always Down On Their Luck   
   Date:   
   March 27, 2008   
   Source:   
   BioMed Centra/Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Healthl   
   Summary:   
   Gambling addicts don't learn from their mistakes, according to a new study.   
   The problem could be explained by a kind of mental rigidity that leads to   
   harmful compulsive behavior in sufferers.   
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   FULL STORY   
   Gambling addicts don't learn from their mistakes, according to a new study.   
   The problem could be explained by a kind of mental rigidity that leads to   
   harmful compulsive behaviour in sufferers.   
      
   Donatella Marazziti of the University of Pisa and colleagues explain that   
   pathological gambling revolves around the uncontrolled impulse to gamble, with   
   serious consequences for the individual and their family. Its cause, however,   
   is unclear. Scientists    
   have suggested that environmental factors and a genetic predisposition play a   
   part, affecting chemical signals in the brain.   
      
   In order to home in on the underlying cause, the Pisa team evaluated a group   
   of 15 male and 5 female pathological gamblers. They carried out various   
   neuropsychological tests in order to explore which areas of the brain are   
   related to the disorder. The    
   tests included the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), the Wechsler Memory   
   Scale revised (WMS-R) and the Verbal Associative Fluency Test (FAS). Each of   
   which can assess particular problem-solving abilities. They compared the   
   results with those of healthy    
   individuals.   
      
   They found that the pathological gamblers scored well in all tests except the   
   card sorting. In this test, the patients had great difficulty in finding   
   different ways to solve each problem in the test as they worked through them,   
   whereas the healthy    
   individuals got better with practice.   
      
   "Our findings show that in spite of normal intellectual, linguistic and   
   visual-spatial abilities, the pathological gamblers could not learn from their   
   mistakes to look for alternative solutions in the WCST," say the researchers.   
   This suggests that there    
   are differences in the part of the brain involved in this kind of problem   
   solving, the prefrontal region. "These differences might provoke a sort of   
   cognitive 'rigidity' that predisposes a person to the development of impulsive   
   or compulsive behaviour,    
   leading to pathological gambling."   
      
   Journal reference: Donatella Marazziti, Mario Catena Dell'Osso, Ciro   
   Conversano, Giorgio Consoli, Laura Vivarelli, Francesco Mungai, Elena Di Nasso   
   and Francesca Golia. Executive function abnormalities in pathological   
   gamblers. Clinical Practice and    
   Epidemiology in Mental Health (in press)   
      
      
   Story Source:   
      
   The above post is reprinted from materials provided by BioMed Centra/Clinical   
   Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Healthl. Note: Materials may be edited for   
   content and length.   
      
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   BioMed Centra/Clinical Practice and Epidemiology in Mental Healthl.   
   "Compulsive Gamblers Always Down On Their Luck." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily,   
   27 March 2008. .   
      
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