Gambling Addiction Treatment May Lie in Neuron Changes, Study

Researchers across the globe are trying to find better ways to treat gambling addiction and effectively prevent gambling harm. Those efforts come at a time when smartphones grant millions of customers access to various sorts of online gambling activities, from poker to online casino, betting on sports and horseracing and many others. Now, a new report suggests that South Korean researchers are trying to find a new way of treating problem gambling via the altering of brain neurons.

Making a Risky or Sensible Decision Depends on Neurons Excitability

As announced by HUiDU.io earlier this week, researchers in the Asian country are trying to improve gambling treatment through an innovative method. Scientists with the Severance Hospital determined that neuronal excitability plays a key role when making high-risk or low-risk decisions.

They concluded that by implementing changes to the shape of the neurons they can impact their excitability. In other words, neurons with changed shape may demonstrate different neuronal excitability. Such change may allow the individual to make more sensible or more risky decisions.

According to Professor Kim Jeon-hoon, the “dendritic morphology and electrophysiological properties in the nucleus accumbens” can depend on risk-taking behavior. Moreover, the Professor suggested that altering those structures may impact the choices related to risk.

Altering Neurons Affects Risk-Taking, Experiments with Mice Show

The research team that focused on the impact of altering the shape of neurons has conducted tests on mice already. In the experiment, the mice had two options: to receive big rewards at a lower frequency by engaging in a higher risk or receive small rewards but consistently and via an option with low risk.

The aforementioned approach helped separate the mice into two groups depending on the approach they engaged in. Focusing on the group with the high-risk tendency, researchers measured their neurons, uncovering that they had lower levels of excitability. When altering neurons of the low-risk group to match the low levels of neuronal excitability of the high-risk group, the low-risk group started to demonstrate riskier behavior.

While the experiment shows evidence with mice, much more research is needed to prove the effectiveness of this method. What’s more, physiological differences in humans may make this process more challenging. Still, with the development of technology, science and artificial intelligence, such treatment does sound plausible.