GAMBLING EUPHORIA AFFECTS BRAIN LIKE DRUGS

WASHINGTON - The brains of people anticipating a win at the roulette table
appear to react much like those taking euphoria-inducing drugs.

A team of investigators reports in the May 24 issue of the journal Neuron
the parts of the brain that respond to the prospects of winning and losing
money while gambling are the same as those that appear to respond to
cocaine and morphine.

The overlap of brain activity seen in the gambling experiment with that
found in earlier studies of drug use indicates, the researchers said, that
the brain uses the same circuitry for "the processing of diverse rewards."

"The results of our gaming experiment, coupled with findings from prior
studies of the anticipation and experience of positive and negative
outcomes in humans and laboratory animals, suggest that a network of
interrelated structures...co-ordinate the processing of goal-related
stimuli," said the team led by Dr. Hans C. Breiter of Massachusetts General
Hospital.

The team also included Peter Shizgal of Concordia University in Montreal,
Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University and Anders Dale and Itzhak Aharon,
both of Massachusetts General Hospital.

A challenge, Brieter said, is to determine how different parts of these
brain circuits affect the thinking, emotion and motivation involved in
anticipation, evaluation, and decision-making.

"Identifying these regions of the brain and mapping the neural pathways
that process the anticipations and 'rewards' associated with drug abuse
would be a tremendous boost to the development of medications or
interventions that could block these circuits and provide other treatment
approaches," said Dr. Alan I. Leshner, director of the National Institute
on Drug Abuse.

The research was supported by NIDA, a division of the National Institute of
Health.

The research team let by Breiter used magnetic resonance imaging to map
brain responses of 12 men while they participated in a game of chance
involving winning of losing money. They found blood flow to the brain
changed in ways similar to that seen in other experiments during an
infusion of cocaine in subjects addicted to that drug and to low doses of
morphine in drug-free individuals.