Rafa Dominik, Kregiel Jakub, Popik Piotr, Rygula Rafal
Affective Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, Department of Behavioral Neuroscience and Drug Development, Institute of Pharmacology Polish Academy of Sciences, 12 Smetna Street, 31-343 Krakow, Poland.
Affective Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, Department of Behavioral Neuroscience and Drug Development, Institute of Pharmacology Polish Academy of Sciences, 12 Smetna Street, 31-343 Krakow, Poland.
Behav Brain Res. 2016 Mar 1;300:97-105. doi: 10.1016/j.bbr.2015.12.013. Epub 2015 Dec 14.
Although gambling disorder is a serious social problem in modern societies, information about the behavioral traits that could determine vulnerability to this psychopathology is still scarce. In this study, we used a recently developed ambiguous-cue interpretation (ACI) paradigm to investigate whether 'optimism' and 'pessimism' as behavioral traits may determine the gambling-like behavior of rodents. In a series of ACI tests (cognitive bias screening), we identified rats that displayed 'pessimistic' and 'optimistic' traits. Subsequently, using the rat slot machine task (rSMT), we investigated if the 'optimistic'/'pessimistic' traits could determine the crucial feature of gambling-like behavior that has been investigated in rats and humans: the interpretation of 'near-miss' outcomes as a positive (i.e., win) situation. We found that 'optimists' did not interpret 'near-miss', 'near loss', or 'clear win' as win trials more often than their 'pessimistic' conspecifics; however, the 'optimists' were statistically more likely to reach for a reward in the hopeless 'clear loss' situation. This agrees with human studies and provides a platform for modeling interactions between behavioral traits and gambling in animals.
尽管赌博障碍在现代社会是一个严重的社会问题，但关于可能决定易患这种精神病理学的行为特征的信息仍然很少。在这项研究中，我们使用了最近开发的模糊线索解释（ACI）范式来研究作为行为特征的“乐观”和“悲观”是否可能决定啮齿动物的类似赌博行为。在一系列ACI测试（认知偏差筛查）中，我们识别出表现出“悲观”和“乐观”特征的大鼠。随后，我们使用大鼠老虎机任务（rSMT），研究“乐观”/“悲观”特征是否能决定在大鼠和人类中都已被研究过的类似赌博行为的关键特征：将“差点赢”结果解释为积极（即赢）的情况。我们发现，“乐观主义者”并不比他们“悲观”的同种个体更频繁地将“差点赢”、“差点输”或“明显赢”解释为赢的试验；然而，在绝望的“明显输”情况下，“乐观主义者”在统计学上更有可能伸手去获取奖励。这与人类研究结果一致，并为模拟动物行为特征与赌博之间的相互作用提供了一个平台。
