Addicted individuals less responsive to reward-anticipation
People with an addiction process rewards in their brain differently from people who are not addicted. However, whether this is associated with "too much" or "too little" brain activity is an open question. Indeed, past research has produced conflicting findings. In order to get a reliable answer, researchers Arnt Schellekens (Radboud university medical center), Guillaume Sescousse an d Maartje Luijten (Radboud University) have combined 25 studies investigating brain reward sensitivity in more than 1200 individuals with and without addiction to various substances such as alcohol, nicotine, cocaine but also gambling. By analyzing the brain images from these studies, they have discovered an important difference in brain activity between expecting a reward and receiving a reward. Reward Compared with non-addicted individuals, individuals with substance or gambling addiction showed a weaker brain response to anticipating monetary rewards. "There was less brain...