Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Nov;25(6):e12841.
doi: 10.1111/adb.12841. Epub 2019 Nov 12.

Cue-induced effects on decision-making distinguish subjects with gambling disorder from healthy controls

Alexander Genauck  1   2 , Milan Andrejevic  1   3 , Katharina Brehm  1 , Caroline Matthis  2   4 , Andreas Heinz  1 , André Weinreich  5 , Norbert Kathmann  5 , Nina Romanczuk-Seiferth  1
Affiliations

Cue-induced effects on decision-making distinguish subjects with gambling disorder from healthy controls

Alexander Genauck et al. Addict Biol. 2020 Nov.

Abstract

While an increased impact of cues on decision-making has been associated with substance dependence, it is yet unclear whether this is also a phenotype of non-substance-related addictive disorders, such as gambling disorder (GD). To better understand the basic mechanisms of impaired decision-making in addiction, we investigated whether cue-induced changes in decision-making could distinguish GD from healthy control (HC) subjects. We expected that cue-induced changes in gamble acceptance and specifically in loss aversion would distinguish GD from HC subjects. Thirty GD subjects and 30 matched HC subjects completed a mixed gambles task where gambling and other emotional cues were shown in the background. We used machine learning to carve out the importance of cue dependency of decision-making and of loss aversion for distinguishing GD from HC subjects. Cross-validated classification yielded an area under the receiver operating curve (AUC-ROC) of 68.9% (p = .002). Applying the classifier to an independent sample yielded an AUC-ROC of 65.0% (p = .047). As expected, the classifier used cue-induced changes in gamble acceptance to distinguish GD from HC. Especially, increased gambling during the presentation of gambling cues characterized GD subjects. However, cue-induced changes in loss aversion were irrelevant for distinguishing GD from HC subjects. To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the classificatory power of addiction-relevant behavioral task parameters when distinguishing GD from HC subjects. The results indicate that cue-induced changes in decision-making are a characteristic feature of addictive disorders, independent of a substance of abuse.

Keywords: Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer; decision-making; gambling disorder; loss aversion.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. A merican Psychiatric Association, American Psychiatric Association, DSM-5 Task Force. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5. Arlington, Va.: American Psychiatric Association; 2013.
    1. Ladouceur R, Boisvert J-M, Pépin M, Loranger M, Sylvain C. Social cost of pathological gambling. J Gambl Stud. 1994;10(4):399-409. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02104905
    1. Romanczuk-Seiferth N, van den Brink W, Goudriaan AE. From Symptoms to Neurobiology: Pathological Gambling in the Light of the New Classification in DSM-5. Neuropsychobiology. 2014;70(2):95-102. https://doi.org/10.1159/000362839
    1. Wiehler A, Peters J. Reward-based decision making in pathological gambling: The roles of risk and delay. Neurosci Res. 2015;90:3-14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neures.2014.09.008
    1. Beck A, Wüstenberg T, Genauck A, et al. Effect of Brain Structure, Brain Function, and Brain Connectivity on Relapse in Alcohol-Dependent PatientsRelapse in Alcohol-Dependent Patients. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2012;69(8):842-852.

Publication types