Brain Implant Study in China Linked to Rise in Gambling Addiction

A medical test in China examining brain implants as a way to treat opioid addiction has come under fire after multiple participants reported big changes in how they act, with uncontrollable gambling showing up as one of the most harmful results.

Patients Report Gambling Addiction After China’s Brain Stimulation Trial

The nationwide experiment conducted from 2021 to 2022, included 60 patients who got deep-brain stimulation (DBS) devices made by SceneRay, a Chinese medical tech company. These implants aimed to reduce drug addiction by sending electrical signals to the nucleus accumbens, a brain area linked to reward, motivation, and impulse control. The method tried to curb opioid cravings, but some people in the study say it instead pushed those urges toward other risky behaviors, reported The Beijing News.

A new probe found that at least eight people called the side effects unbearable. Gambling issues topped the list of problems. Many patients reported that right after doctors turned on the device, they felt a strong urge to gamble, often on the internet, even though some of the patients had never gambled before. For several patients, this led to big financial losses and growing debts.

Brain Implant Patient Loses $28,000 Gambling 

One trial participant joined the study after using heroin for over 10 years. Once doctors turned on the implant, he started to obsess over gambling, losing about 200,000 yuan ($28,000) in a few months. His life got so bad that he had to go to the psych ward several times, and he went back to drugs even though the treatment was supposed to stop that.

Later, when doctors turned off the device because he asked them to, the patient felt upset and begged them to turn it back on. This showed he had become very dependent on how the device changed his brain. He thought about suing the company that made the device, but did not go through with it after lawyers said it would be hard to prove the device caused his problems.

Brain Stimulation Trial Shows Unpredictable Effects

Other people in the trial talked about more changes in how they acted and felt. These included feeling worried, having high energy, reacting more slowly, and wanting sex more. However, gambling stood out as a problem that kept coming back and caused a lot of damage. It messed up people’s finances, relationships with family, and how well they got along in society.

Doctors running the trial admitted that making the nucleus accumbens active can cause many different effects that are hard to predict. Changing the electrical settings might help with some bad reactions in some cases, but quite a few patients said things did not get much better even after many attempts to fix the settings. By mid-January, 11 people in the trial had decided to turn off their devices.

SceneRay has stood by the study, pointing out that regulators approved its DBS system in 2017 and that the trial met ethical review standards. Even so, the reported results have fueled discussions about whether brain stimulation to treat addiction might redirect compulsive behavior instead of eliminating it.