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Casino Games Make You Think
While you were sitting at a computer
surfing some online casino site, have you ever stopped to wonder
how your mind processes risk? Well perhaps casino games aren't
exactly a head scratcher, but the mind's unique ability to process
risk and out come is part of what separate the human animal from
other species.
Steven Quartz, of the California
Institute of technology, has recently performed some extremely
interesting studies which suggest that there are specific regions
of the human brain that process the activity of gambling. Through
fMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging, it is possibly to
look at activity in the brain while the human subject is
completing a task. In this case, casino games are the task being
studied. The results yielded from the study give a clue as to how
the mind processes certain kinds of information
This study is groundbreaking because
it opens the door to possible treatment of certain compulsions
associated with gambling which here-to-for were rather difficult
to pin point. Disorders such as gambling addiction will be
possible to treat medicinally if there is in fact a correlation to
certain chemicals in the brain and the propensity to be attracted
to casino gambling.
Apparently Quartz has focused his
research on the anticipatory period that occurs between receiving
cards in a poker game. This is the moment in time where there is a
anxiousness felt by the player. The "anticipatory period" as
define by Quartz and his colleagues at the Institute, is then
subdivided into to smaller periods. The moment immediately after
the first card is dealt is one full of anticipation of reward
however, six seconds after the ascertation of risk becomes the
primary focus of the mind.
The hope of all the participants in
the research is to find exactly what is the difference between
"normal risk takers" and those suffering from a pathological
disorder. This will not happen merely by isolating the area of the
brain that perceives risk. In order to prevent the addiction many
experience while playing casino games, the regions' functions will
have to be studied even further.
-Current
Online Casino News-
-August
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