WHAT separates compulsive gamblers from those who can walk away before they lose their shirts? The answer may lie in a gambler's brain waves, according to two psychologists who have measured the electrical activity in gamblers' brains.
Charles Warren and Bruce McDonough of the University of Illinois at Chicago suspected that differences in the brain's responses to playing, winning and losing might help to explain why some gamblers become addicted while others enjoy the habit without letting it ruin their lives. So they advertised around the university campus for people who gambled at least once a week. Those who responded were given a questionnaire called the South Oaks Gambling Scale, which assesses whether someone has a serious gambling problem.
The next step was to wire up nine compulsive gamblers and seven social gamblers to an electroencephalograph (EEG) and get them to play a simple computer game. The volunteers watched as ...
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