The brains of people anticipating a win at the roulette table appear to react much like those taking euphoria-inducing drugs. A team of investigators reports in the May 24 issue of the journal Neuron that the parts of the brain that respond to the prospects of winning and losing money while gambling are the same as those that appear to respond to cocaine and morphine. The overlap of brain activity seen in the gambling experiment with that found in earlier studies of drug use indicates, the researchers said, that the brain uses the same circuitry for "the processing of diverse rewards." The research was led by Dr. Hans C. Breiter of Massachusetts General Hospital. A challenge for the future, he said, is to determine how different parts of these brain circuits affect the thinking, emotion and motivation involved in anticipation, evaluation, and decision-making. "Identifying these regions of the brain and mapping the neural pathways would be a tremendous boost to the development of medications or interventions that could block these circuits and provide other treatment approaches," said Dr. Alan I. Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The research team led by Breiter used magnetic resonance imaging to map the brain responses of 12 men while they participated in a game of chance involving winning or losing money. They found that in the gambling experiment, blood flow to the brain changed in ways similar to that seen in other experiments during an infusion of cocaine in subjects addicted to that drug and to low doses of morphine in drug-free individuals. The changes varied in accordance with the amount of money involved and the more money involved, the more excited the person became. The primary response to winning, or the prospect of winning, was seen in the right hemisphere of the brain, while the left hemisphere was more active in response to losing, the researchers reported. (Agencies) | 在輪盤賭桌上期待著贏一把的賭徒們大腦極度興奮，其狀態就像是服了能夠讓人產生興奮感的毒品一樣。 調查人員在5月24日出版的《神經元》雜志上發表了他們的研究報告，報告稱大腦中對賭博時贏錢和輸錢作出反應的部位和對可卡因和嗎啡作出反應的部位是同一部位。 該實驗對賭博時和服用毒品后大腦活動的軌跡進行了對比研究，發現這兩種狀態中的人大腦活動的軌跡是重疊的。對此，研究人員認為，大腦中處理賭博輸贏結果的系統和對毒品作出反應的系統是同一系統。
實驗由來自馬薩諸塞總醫院漢斯-布萊特博士牽頭進行。 布萊特博士說，他們今后面臨的挑戰是搞清楚這個系統中的不同部分是如何分別影響人們在預測、評估和決策過程中的思維、感情和動機的。 美國全國吸毒研究院主任阿蘭-萊施納說："搞清楚這些結構組織在大腦中的具體分布，把這些神經傳輸線路精確定位，將大大改進對吸毒者的藥物治療，或是有效地終止這種腦部活動，進而提供其它治療方法。
由布萊特領導的研究小組使用磁力共振繪圖法，得到了12個人在參加一次賭博游戲中大腦的反應曲線。 他們通過這個賭博游戲發現，實驗參加者血液流向大腦的方式和向癮君子注射可卡因時或讓正常人服用少量嗎啡時血液流向大腦的方式很相似。 參加游戲的人的大腦活動因涉及金錢的金額不同而發生變化，涉及金額越大，參與者就越興奮。 研究結果還包括，右腦對贏錢或贏錢的前景作出積極反應，而左腦則對作出輸錢的反應較明顯。 (中國日報網站譯） |
Updated: 2001-06-04 01:00
