Serotonergic and dopaminergic control of impulsivity in gambling disorder

Abstract

Gambling disorder (GD) is major public health issue. The disorder is often characterized by elevated impulsivity with evidence from analogous substance use disorders underlining prominent roles of brain monoamines in addiction susceptibility and outcome. Critically, GD allows the study of addiction mechanisms without the confounder of the effects of chronic substances. Here, we assessed the roles of striatal dopamine transporter binding and extrastriatal serotonin transporter binding in GD as a function of impulsivity using [ 123 I]FP-CIT SPECT imaging in 20 older adults with GD (DSM-5 criteria; mean age 64 years) and 40 non-GD age-and sex-matched controls. We focused on GD in older individuals because there are prominent age-related changes in neurotransmitter function and because there are no reported neuroimaging studies of GD in older adults. Volume-of-interest-based and voxelwise analyses were performed. GD patients scored clearly higher on impulsivity and had higher tracer binding in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex than controls (p < 0.001), likely reflecting serotonin transporter activity. The binding in the medial prefrontal cortex positively correlated with impulsivity over the whole sample (r = 0.62, p < 0.001) as

Frontal white and gray matter abnormality in gambling disorder: A multimodal MRI study

“…There are few previous studies on older adults with GD ( Kaasinen et al., 2023 ). This is notable, particularly regarding the results on WM lesions associated with aging.…”

From genes to performance: Dopaminergic modulation of decision making in a stock market simulation.

“…This includes the identification of the dopaminergic system as a neural substrate for the processing of economic value (Burke et al, 2018) and the tolerance of risk and delay costs (Soutschek et al, 2023), the involvement of dopaminoceptive structures in reward value and risk encoding (Schultz et al, 2008), and the detection of widespread activation in dopaminergic regions associated with behavior on decision-making tasks in neuroimaging studies (Baker et al, 2013). Furthermore, alterations in decision making can be found in pathologies with the involvement of dopaminergic dysfunction (e.g., Clark & Dagher, 2014), and dopamine also plays an important role in gambling disorders (e.g., Kaasinen et al, 2023; Zack et al, 2020). Therefore, genetic variation concerning four dopaminergic mechanisms (dopamine transporter, catechol-O-methyltransferase [COMT], dopamine D 2 and D 4 receptors) and their effects on trading behavior and the final financial outcome will be investigated in this study.…”

Electronic gambling machines and dopamine.

“…and might involve the noradrenergic system [125] and/or interactions between DA and noradrenaline [119,126]. Likewise, serotonin might contribute to some aspects of gambling behavior [127][128][129][130], and might also interact with the DA system [131].…”