Inside the brain of a gambling addict - BBC News

[Music] that is getting me excited over we arranged for Gambler Tony Franklin to join a unique experiment by one of the world's leading experts on addiction Professor David nut now gambling addiction is not a failure of will it is a brain disorder which is prayed upon by the gambling industry hly I can feel my heartbeat just Rising just looking at the damn thing once you become addicted it's very very hard to stop because you have turned you've changed your brain addiction is a is a brain that has changed to become entrained to the desires of

the of the gambling so we going to start Tas Tony this will be the first time anyone plays something similar to a fixed odds betting terminal from inside an MRI scanner the professor says it will reveal what's happening in Tony's brain as he uses a keypad to bet ,000 to spend can I spend it all on the first spin when Tony is doing his task when he's looking at the roulette will and he's making a decision to bet parts of the brain get turned on and then they can't stop and we think there's probably a

chemical basis to that so that's what we're expecting to see that the Habit centers are overactivated in people with gambling compared with normal people like us [Music] the brain's not very active maybe a little bit here he's thinking at the what you know what should I do but it's pretty calm contrast that with what happens in the next [Music] one and that's a huge difference from indeed there to there exactly that's in a matter of seconds as well would it be exactly absolutely yes okay so here we see the visual system the back of the

brain here intensely activated he's watching really closely he wants that ball bearing to come down on his color and now we look at the emotional regions and these are different regions activated this is the anterior singular cortex this is the insula and these are the two areas of the brain which make sense of emotions they may generate the emotion he's feeling of excitement will I win won't I [Music] win and here we see the very similar picture in fact the only real difference between winning and anticipating is this area here and this is an area

where I think we see the sense of uh satisfaction yeah I've won that's good register that start again but overall winning and waiting to see if you've won the anticipation they're both pretty much the same and that's a really key point about gambling it's not just the winning that counts it's the taking part and the taking part repeatedly when you don't win is as activating to a gambler as the winning when when you're sitting in a fixed odd terminal you're getting this every 20 seconds yeah so you can have hundreds of them and so that

process can become in the end it becomes kind of Habitual it becomes addictive the association of British boot makers told us 99 .5% of people who gamble do so responsibly gambling addiction is complex and multifaceted and as an industry we strongly encourage responsible gambling