Namely, rats, like people appear to be susceptible to the ‘near-miss’ effect. Using an animal model of slot machine play, we have discovered that rats share key features of game play with humans.
We are interested in what predisposes some people toward the development of this kind of pathological gambling. But for some, gambling can become a maladaptive compulsion similar to drug or alcohol addiction. For most people this is relatively harmless and generally doesn’t involve anything more than losing a few bucks playing poker.
The vast majority of us have easy access to gambling opportunities and will gamble at some point in our lives. Gambling is a culturally and socially ubiquitous phenomenon.
