Hales Claire A, Hwang April, Hathaway Brett A, Winstanley Catharine A
Department of Psychology, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Department of Psychology, Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Physiol Behav. 2025 Oct 1;299:114979. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2025.114979. Epub 2025 Jun 3.
In both males and females, linking rewards with salient audiovisual cues in simulated gambling games increases risky choice in humans and rats. However, the prevalence and severity of gambling problems differs in men and women. In previous work, reinforcement learning (RL) models were applied to data from male rats performing the rat gambling task (rGT) to investigate the computational processes promoting risky choice. In the rGT, the optimal strategy is to favor options paired with smaller per-trial gains but shorter and less frequent time-out penalties. Rewards are either delivered with (cued) or without (uncued) concurrent audiovisual cues. Previous work showed these cues drive risky decision making by causing male rats to under weigh the relative cost of timeout punishments, specifically for one of the highly risky options. Here, we applied the same methodology to a large dataset from female rats performing the cued and uncued rGT to investigate whether the same cognitive mechanism drives risky decision making across sexes. Cues decreased the learning rate from all time-out penalties in female rats, rather than specifically from those paired with a risky option. Although females were less sensitive to the shortest time-outs associated with the one pellet option (P1), this computation failed to promote choice of this comparatively safe option due to the overall lower learning rate from penalties. Differences revealed by computational modeling in the way risky choice develops across sexes may help us understand the divergent trajectory of gambling disorder in men and women.
在男性和女性中，在模拟赌博游戏中将奖励与显著的视听线索联系起来会增加人类和大鼠的冒险选择。然而，赌博问题的普遍性和严重程度在男性和女性中有所不同。在之前的研究中，强化学习（RL）模型被应用于执行大鼠赌博任务（rGT）的雄性大鼠的数据，以研究促进冒险选择的计算过程。在rGT中，最优策略是倾向于选择每次试验收益较小但超时惩罚时间较短且频率较低的选项。奖励在有（提示）或没有（无提示）同时出现的视听线索的情况下发放。先前的研究表明，这些线索通过使雄性大鼠低估超时惩罚的相对成本来驱动冒险决策，特别是对于其中一个高风险选项。在这里，我们将相同的方法应用于执行有提示和无提示rGT的雌性大鼠的一个大型数据集，以研究相同的认知机制是否驱动跨性别的冒险决策。线索降低了雌性大鼠所有超时惩罚的学习率，而不是特别降低与高风险选项相关的那些惩罚的学习率。尽管雌性大鼠对与单颗食丸选项（P1）相关的最短超时不太敏感，但由于惩罚的总体学习率较低，这种计算未能促进对这个相对安全选项的选择。计算模型揭示的跨性别冒险选择发展方式的差异可能有助于我们理解男性和女性赌博障碍的不同轨迹。
