ArticleNeuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology2011
Serotonin and dopamine play complementary roles in gambling to recover losses.
Article in Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers.
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Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed, 82 citations in OpenAlex.
- Dopamine Receptor-Specific Contributions to the Computation of Value.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2018Trial
- Effects of pramipexole on the processing of rewarding and aversive taste stimuli.Psychopharmacology · 2013Trial
- In for a penny, in for a pound: methylphenidate reduces the inhibitory effect of high stakes on persistent risky choice.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2012Trial
- Modulation of social influence by methylphenidate.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2012Trial
- The effects of acute tryptophan depletion on costly information sampling: impulsivity or aversive processing?Psychopharmacology · 2012Trial
- Potential roles for vitamin D in preventing and treating impulse control disorders, behavioral addictions, and substance use disorders: A scoping review.Addiction neuroscience · 2025Article
- Similarities and Differences in Neurobiology.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2025Review
- Toward a Unifying Account of Dopamine's Role in Cost-Benefit Decision Making.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2023Review
- Serotonin modulates asymmetric learning from reward and punishment in healthy human volunteers.Communications biology · 2022Article
- Influences of social uncertainty and serotonin on gambling decisions.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Neuromodulation of prefrontal cortex cognitive function in primates: the powerful roles of monoamines and acetylcholine.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2022Review
- Vulnerability and fraud: evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic.Humanities & social sciences communications · 2022Article
- When Helping Is Risky: The Behavioral and Neurobiological Trade-off of Social and Risk Preferences.Psychological science · 2021Article
- An Experimental Medicine Investigation of the Effects of Subacute Pramipexole Treatment on Emotional Information Processing in Healthy Volunteers.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Selective effects of serotonin on choices to gather more information.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2021Article
- Human complex exploration strategies are enriched by noradrenaline-modulated heuristics.eLife · 2021Article
- Using pharmacological manipulations to study the role of dopamine in human reward functioning: A review of studies in healthy adults.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2021Review
- Dopamine and reward hypersensitivity in Parkinson's disease with impulse control disorder.Brain : a journal of neurology · 2020Article
- The Role of Tryptophan and Tyrosine in Executive Function and Reward Processing.International journal of tryptophan research : IJTR · 2020Review
- The Stimulating Nature of Gambling Behaviors: Relationships Between Stimulant Use and Gambling Among Adolescents.Journal of gambling studies · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Continued gambling to recover losses--'loss chasing'--is a prominent feature of social and pathological gambling. However, little is known about the neuromodulators that influence this behavior. In three separate experiments, we investigated the role of serotonin activity, D(2)/D(3) receptor activity, and beta-adrenoceptor activity on the loss chasing of age and IQ-matched healthy adults randomized to treatment or an appropriate control/placebo. In Experiment 1, participants consumed amino-acid drinks that did or did not contain the serotonin precursor, tryptophan. In Experiment 2, participants received a single 176 μg dose of the D(2)/D(3) receptor agonist, pramipexole, or placebo. In Experiment 3, participants received a single 80 mg dose of the beta-adrenoceptor blocker, propranolol, or placebo. Following treatment, participants completed a computerized loss-chasing game. Mood and heart rate were measured at baseline and following treatment. Tryptophan depletion significantly reduced the number of decisions made to chase losses, and the number of consecutive decisions to chase, in the absence of marked changes in mood. By contrast, pramipexole significantly increased the value of losses chased and diminished the value of losses surrendered. Propranolol markedly reduced heart rate, but produced no significant changes in loss-chasing behavior. Loss chasing can be thought of as an aversively motivated escape behavior controlled, in part, by the marginal value of continued gambling relative to the value of already accumulated losses. Serotonin and dopamine appear to play dissociable roles in the tendency of individuals to gamble to recover, or to seek to 'escape' from, previous losses. Serotonergic activity seems to promote the availability of loss chasing as a behavioral option, whereas D(2)/D(3) receptor activity produces complex changes in the value of losses judged worth chasing. Sympathetic arousal, at least as mediated by beta-adrenoceptors, does not play a major role in laboratory-based loss-chasing choices.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.