Archival ReportIncreased Striatal Dopamine Synthesis Capacity in Gambling Addiction
Section snippets
Subjects
In total, 15 PGs and 15 HCs were recruited. All HCs and 13 PGs had also participated in a previous pharmaco-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study 41, 46. The other 2 PGs were newly recruited. PGs were recruited through advertisement and addiction treatment centers, and they reported not to be medicated or in treatment for their gambling at the time of the PET study. HCs were recruited through advertisement.
All subjects who had participated in the pharmaco-fMRI study underwent a
Subject Characteristics and Traits
Subject characteristics are summarized in Table 1. The two groups were matched for age, body mass index, net income, and verbal IQ [based on the Dutch version of the National Adult Reading Test (54)]. Measures acquired on the PET testing day indicated that PGs were significantly more impulsive, had higher SOGS scores during the past year and past 3 months, and had more gambling distortions than HCs.
PET Measures
Mean Ki was significantly different between ROIs (F3,78 = 122.95, p < .001, Cohen’s d = 4.34) and
Discussion
Our study establishes for the first time a key link between pathological gambling and increased striatal dopamine synthesis capacity. This observation is in line with previous findings showing that dopamine release is increased in the dorsal striatum of PGs following amphetamine administration (40) and is positively correlated with subjective excitement 36, 39 and gambling severity (36) in the ventral striatum in the context of gambling. Our results also agree with reports of greater
Acknowledgments and Disclosures
RJvH was supported by a Rubicon grant from the Netherlands Research Organization (Grant No. 446.11.025). GS was supported by a Veni grant from the Netherlands Research Organization (Grant No. 016.155.218). RC was supported by a Vici grant from the Netherlands Research Organization (Grant No. 2015/24762/MaGW) and a James McDonnell scholar award.
WJJ serves as a consultant to Genentech, Novartis, and Bioclinica. All other authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of
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RJvH and GS contributed equally to this work.