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Principal Investigator: Dipali Venkataraman Rinker, PhD, University of Houston
Awarded $34,500 in 2016
Aim: Investigate gambling beliefs, patterns, family history and attitudes among Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, Filipino and Pakistani students.
Principal Investigator: Tony Buchanan, PhD, Saint Louis University
Awarded $34,500 in 2016
Aim: Characterize the relation between stress physiology and reward/punishment sensitivity through assessment of the daily pattern of cortisol secretion as well as monetary reward/punishment decisions in 25 persons with gambling disorder and a 25-person comparison group.
Principal Investigator: Mike Robinson, Ph.D., Wesleyan University
Awarded $34,500 in 2016
Aim: Understand the contribution of two cortical regions (the orbitofrontal cortex and the anterior insula cortex) and one subcortical limbic region (the nucleus accumbens) to the process of choosing between safe and risky options.
Principal Investigator: Sarah W. Yip, PhD, Yale School of Medicine
Awarded $1,500 in 2016
Dr. Yip will present at the 2016 meeting of the Society of Biological Psychiatry on the findings of a brain imaging study that sought to confirm the hypothesis that there are structural similarities between behavioral and substance addictions.
Principal Investigator: Michael Amlung, PhD, McMaster University
Awarded $1,500 in 2016
Dr. Amlung will present at the 2016 meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis International on his research finding of strong support for impulsive delay discounting as a core behavioral phenotype of addictive disorders, including gambling disorder.
Principal Investigator: Mariya Cherkasova, PhD
Awarded $34,500 in 2016
Aim: Understand the effects that sensory reward cues have on risky decision making in both healthy volunteers and disordered gamblers through a laboratory tasks; for example, measuring the impact of cues using eye tracking.
Principal Investigator: Joshua B. Grubbs, PhD, Bowling Green State University
Awarded $34,500
Aim: Deepen the knowledge of the co-occurrence of gambling disorder and post-traumatic stress, by specifically examining the dispositional, motivational, and cognitive aspects of the known relationships between the two domains. Using two samples of veterans in a residential treatment program and an online, community sample of gambling adults, the project seeks to examine how symptoms of post-traumatic stress may be related to a tendency toward negative emotion (i.e., trait neuroticism), gambling-related cognitions (i.e., positive expectancies about gambling), and motivation to use gambling to cope with or escape from negative emotion.
Principal Investigator: Jon E. Grant, J.D., M.D., M.P.H.
Award: $402,500 in 2013; supplementary funding of $135,000 awarded in 2016
Emerging evidence shows remarkable similarities in signs, symptoms and neuro-pathology among several forms of impulsive behavior, such as pathological gambling, excessive drug and alcohol use, and risk-taking behaviors such as driving recklessly and sexual promiscuity. Identifying and understanding these commonalities of impulsivity may reveal the driving force behind pathological gambling. The behaviors that characterize pathological gambling (for example, chasing losses, preoccupation with gambling, inability to stop) have been strongly linked to an inability to inhibit reward-seeking, also referred to as “impulsivity” or “disinhibition.” Understanding the complexity of impulse inhibition is a crucial step toward developing effective prevention and treatment strategies.
Developmentally, impulsive behavior that underlies pathological gambling tends to start during late adolescence or early adulthood. Consequently, the center’s multidisciplinary research team is studying a sample of 500 adolescents and young adults (ages 13-25). The sample is being assessed for a range of impulsive behaviors, family history, comorbidity and developmental history. The predictive power of the impulsivity models developed is being tested by following a sample of the adolescents longitudinally during the last two years of the grant to examine the development of a gambling disorder and other impulsive behaviors. The research team is developing and pilot testing cognitive behavioral interventions that will directly target impulse inhibition and decision-making.
The long-term clinical question being pursued by the center is: Can we develop a susceptibility model of impulsivity that will allow us to identify young adults at risk of developing pathological gambling and, thereby, develop effective interventions for prevention and treatment?
