Depression levels are associated with reduced capacity to learn to actively avoid aversive events in young adults.

Depression and anxiety are often characterized by altered reward-seeking and avoidance, respectively. Yet less is known about the relationship between depressive symptoms and specific avoidance behaviors. To address this gap, we conducted two studies.

Effects of Audiovisual Cues on Game Immersion during Simulated Slot Machine Gambling.

Modern slot machines can create immersive experiences for gamblers. Design features, including audiovisual cues, may influence these experiences, potentially interacting with personal risk factors for disordered gambling. According to the incentive salience hypothesis of addiction, reward-paired audiovisual cues strongly motivate behavior.

Bipolar disorders and creativity: the roles of ambition, effort-based decision-making, and exploration.

Introduction: Epidemiological research has shown those with bipolar disorders (BD) are more likely to work in creative professions. The current work is the first to examine ambition, exploration versus exploitation ratio, and insensitivity to effort/rewards among individuals with and without BD in an Asian cultural context.

Methods: Writers and visual artists from Hong Kong who were diagnosed with BD completed a questionnaire to assess lifetime creative accomplishments, a self-rated measure of ambition, and two laboratory-based tasks: the observe-or-bet task to detect exploration versus exploitation tendencies, and an effort discounting task to measure sensitivity to effort required and reward level.

A longitudinal replication study testing migration from video game loot boxes to gambling in British Columbia, Canada.

Background: Loot boxes are randomized reward mechanics in modern video games that share features with conventional gambling products. Research studies have begun to test longitudinal patterns ("migration") from engagement with loot boxes to gambling behavior. This study investigated such effects at a 6-month follow-up in an online sample of young adults that play video games (aged 19-25) from British Columbia, Canada.

Watch and yearn? Effects of watching gambling livestreams on cravings.

Background: Gambling content on streaming platforms has gained popularity. Given their intense, cue-laden nature, watching gambling streams may trigger cravings among viewers. At the same time, people who gamble may be motivated to watch gambling streams in an attempt to regulate their cravings.

Exploratory study of associations between monetary reward anticipation brain responses and mu-opioid signalling in alcohol dependence, gambling disorder and healthy controls.

Alcohol dependence (AD) and gambling disorder (GD) are common addiction disorders with significant physical and mental health consequences. AD and GD are associated with dysregulated responses to reward which could be due to a common mechanism of dysregulated endogenous opioid signalling. We explored associations between reward anticipation responses, using the Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) task, and mu-opioid receptor (MOR) availability and endogenous opioid release capacity using [C]carfentanil positron emission tomography (PET), in 13 AD, 15 GD and 14 heathy control (HC) participants.

Within-session chasing of losses and wins in an online eCasino.

Chasing refers to the escalation of betting behaviour. It is conventionally seen when losing but can also be seen after wins. Diagnostic and screening items for gambling problems describe chasing as returning 'another day' to gamble.

Impulse and reason? Justifications in problem gambling.

People often use justifications to make desirable choices, but little is known about these justificatory thoughts in gambling. We conducted an exploratory Study 1 (n = 101) and a confirmatory Study 2 (n = 154) using online surveys, recruiting gamblers with prior and current experience of trying to reduce their gambling. Using justifications recognized in the domains of eating and consumer behavior (e.

Between-session chasing of losses and wins in an online eCasino.

Background And Aims: This study characterized chasing behaviour as the time to return to an online gambling website after a losing or a winning visit.

Methods: We analyzed a naturalistic dataset from an eCasino (PlayNow.com, the provincial platform for British Columbia, Canada), comprising 1,909,681 sessions from 15,544 individuals.

Post-reinforcement pauses during slot machine gambling are moderated by immersion.

The post-reinforcement pause (PRP) is an operant effect in which response latencies increase on trials following the receipt and consumption of reward. Human studies demonstrate analogous effects in electronic gambling machines that utilise random ratio reinforcement schedules. We sought to identify moderators of the human PRP effect, hypothesising that the magnitude of gamblers' PRPs is moderated by the type of reinforcing outcome (genuine wins vs.

Gender gaps in publications and citations in gambling studies: Comparisons against addiction science.

Objective: Women in academia publish fewer papers and receive fewer citations than men. These gender gaps likely reflect systemic biases operating over several levels, from journal editorial policies to academic career progression. This study sought to characterize gender gaps for publications and citations in the field of gambling studies.

Risk-promoting effects of reward-paired cues in human sign- and goal-trackers.

Animal research suggests trait-like individual variation in the degree of incentive salience attribution to reward-predictive cues, defined phenotypically as sign-tracking (high) and goal-tracking (low incentive salience attribution). While these phenotypes have been linked to addiction features in rodents, their translational validity is less clear. Here, we examined whether sign- and goal-tracking in healthy human volunteers modulates the effects of reward-paired cues on decision making.

Computational modelling of reinforcement learning and functional neuroimaging of probabilistic reversal for dissociating compulsive behaviours in gambling and cocaine use disorders.

Background: Individuals with cocaine use disorder or gambling disorder demonstrate impairments in cognitive flexibility: the ability to adapt to changes in the environment. Flexibility is commonly assessed in a laboratory setting using probabilistic reversal learning, which involves reinforcement learning, the process by which feedback from the environment is used to adjust behavior.

Aims: It is poorly understood whether impairments in flexibility differ between individuals with cocaine use and gambling disorders, and how this is instantiated by the brain.

This time with feeling: In-play sports betting as a vehicle for emotion regulation.

Objective: The purpose of this research was to assess factors (i.e., emotion regulation, impulsivity) that motivate in-play sports betting.

Behavioural expressions of loss-chasing in gambling: A systematic scoping review.

BANERJEE Nilosmita., CHEN Zhang., CLARK Luke.

Blocking D2/D3 dopamine receptors in male participants increases volatility of beliefs when learning to trust others.

The ability to learn about other people is crucial for human social functioning. Dopamine has been proposed to regulate the precision of beliefs, but direct behavioural evidence of this is lacking. In this study, we investigate how a high dose of the D2/D3 dopamine receptor antagonist sulpiride impacts learning about other people's prosocial attitudes in a repeated Trust game.

Gender Impacts the Relationship between Mood Disorder Symptoms and Effortful Avoidance Performance.

We must often decide how much effort to exert or withhold to avoid undesirable outcomes or obtain rewards. In depression and anxiety, levels of avoidance can be excessive and reward-seeking may be reduced. Yet outstanding questions remain about the links between motivated action/inhibition and anxiety and depression levels, and whether they differ between men and women.