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. 2013 Apr 4;8(4):e60885.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0060885. Print 2013.

Neurological soft signs in individuals with pathological gambling

Igor Elman  1 , Tamara V Gurvits, Evelyne Tschibelu, Justin D Spring, Natasha B Lasko, Roger K Pitman
Affiliations

Neurological soft signs in individuals with pathological gambling

Igor Elman et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Increased neurological soft signs (NSSs) have been found in a number of neuropsychiatric syndromes, including chemical addiction. The present study examined NSSs related to perceptual-motor and visuospatial processing in a behavioral addiction viz., pathological gambling (PG). As compared to mentally healthy individuals, pathological gamblers displayed significantly poorer ability to copy two- and three-dimensional figures, to recognize objects against a background noise, and to orient in space on a road-map test. Results indicated that PG is associated with subtle cerebral cortical abnormalities. Further prospective clinical research is needed to address the NSSs' origin and chronology (e.g., predate or follow the development of PG) as well as their response to therapeutic interventions and/or their ability to predict such a response.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. The two-dimensional (diamond and cross) and three-dimensional (Necker cube, smoking pipe, hidden line elimination cube, pyramid and dissected pyramid) figures copied by the subjects (Panel A). Examples of PG subjects' performance on the Copy Figure Test (Panel B).
Figure 2
Figure 2. Detection and Recognition of an Object Test (DROT).
“High noise” and “low noise” sets were presented separately, with the latter following the former. Subjects were instructed to identify the object embedded in the noise.
Figure 3
Figure 3. The Money Road Map Test (RMT).
The continuous dotted line represents the path followed by the researcher's pen. Subjects were asked at each successive turn to indicate whether it was right or left. The smaller dotted line in the lower right serves as a practice trial.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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