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. 2024 Feb;29(2):e13373.
doi: 10.1111/adb.13373.

Impact of online poker gambling on behavioural and neurophysiological responses to a virtual gambling task

Julie Giustiniani  1   2   3 , Magali Nicolier  1   2   3   4 , Audrey Diwoux  4 , Thibaut Chabin  2   4 , Lionel Pazart  1   3 , Emmanuel Haffen  1   2   3   5 , Damien Gabriel  1   3   4
Affiliations

Impact of online poker gambling on behavioural and neurophysiological responses to a virtual gambling task

Julie Giustiniani et al. Addict Biol. 2024 Feb.

Abstract

Online poker gambling (OPG) involves various executive control processes and emotion regulation. In this context, we hypothesized that online poker players, accustomed to handling virtual cards, would show high performance on computerized decision-making tasks such as the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). Using press advertisements, we recruited a non-gambler group (NG; n = 20) and an OPG group (n = 22). All participants performed the IGT while their cerebral activity was recorded by electroencephalography. Compared with the OPG group, the NG group showed significantly better progression in the IGT in the last trials. Recording of brain activity revealed the appearance of a temporal map between 150 and 175 ms specific to the gain condition in both groups. A second map was observed at 215-295 ms specifically in the NG group, and the generators were identified in the occipital regions. This activity is indicative of a high level of visual awareness; thus, it reflects additional processing of visual information, which can be assumed to be induced by the lower exposure of the NGs to online card games. We hypothesize that the absence of this activity in the OPG group might be due to their online habituation to virtual environments.

Keywords: Iowa Gambling Task; anhedonia; decision-making; online poker gambling.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Behavioural performance in the Iowa Gambling Task. Evolution of the net score in each block for the non‐gambler (NG) group (in blue) and the online poker gambler (OPG) group (in red)
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Results of segmentation after a win and a loss in the non‐gambler and online poker gambler groups
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Topography and source localization of time window 4 (map 4) and time window 6 (map 6). Left: topography (top) and source localization (bottom) of map 4. Right: topography (top) and source localization (bottom) of map 6
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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