William Atkins
Tuesday, 17 February 2009 21:10
Science -
Health
Page 2 of 4
The researchers directed their human subjects to use a simplified slot machine in order to measure their responses to the game, along with the amount of desire they had to continue playing the game.
A slot machine (also called a fruit machine, poker machine, or one-armed bandit) is a casino gambling machine with three or more reels reels that spin when a button is pushed (or a level is pulled on the side of the machine).
The results are shown in brightly colored images of fruit (such as cherries), numerals, letters, diamonds, hearts, bells, cartoon characters, actors or celebrities, or other such easily recognizable symbols.
An example of a “near-miss” would be two cherries in a slot machine, where a “full-miss” would be only one cherry. Three cherries (or three of the same symbol) would result in a money payout to the user from the slot machine (the casino, such as the ones in
Las Vegas, Nevada).
Dr. Luke Clark, one of the authors of the study, stated,
“We devised a series of experiments to elicit near-miss and control phenomena in the laboratory and used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the brain mechanisms underlying these cognitive distortions.” [News-Medical.Net: Sunday, February 15, 2009): "
New insight into why gambling is so attractive to some"]
They stated in the abstract to the paper,
“Compared to full-misses, near-misses were experienced as less pleasant, but increased desire to play.”
As stated earlier they used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which measures blood flow in the brain or spinal cord of humans, to study the ventral striatum and medial frontal cortex regions of the brain.
Page three states the conclusions of the study.
