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  3. It is not the thrill of winning, but the thrill of almost winning that sets a problem gambler apart from those who just fancy a

It is not the thrill of winning, but the thrill of almost winning that sets a problem gambler apart from those who just fancy a

admin2013-02-05  32
问题     It is not the thrill of winning, but the thrill of almost winning that sets a problem gambler apart from those who just fancy a flutter. A strong reaction in the brain in response to "near misses" is correlated with a greater tendency to compulsive gambling, according to new research.
    Gambling touches almost everyone, from friends playing online poker to grannies buying lottery tickets. For many it is just good fun, but for some it becomes a weak addiction which wrecks lives: they need bigger wins to satisfy their desire, and when forced to stop they suffer withdrawal symptoms.
    Henry Chase and Luke Clark of the University of Cambridge are interested in the cognitive complexities of gamblers. For instance, gamblers often believe that games like picking lottery numbers involve some degree of skill, even though they do not. In games where skill does matter, such as football, a near miss like kicking a ball into the goalpost can rightly be associated with almost scoring a goal. So assigning value to an almost-goal makes some sense. But in games of chance, near misses are meaningless. They say nothing about the future likelihood of winning.
    Yet that is not the way many people think about it. Dr. Chase and Dr. Clark have found that in normal healthy volunteers, near misses that won participants not a penny still activated parts of the brain associated with monetary wins. In a new study, they invited 20 volunteers, two of whom were women, to play a kind of slot machine (老虎机) while a functional magnetic-resonance imaging scanner (磁共振成像扫描仪) examined their brain activity. These machines show certain parts of the brain "lighting up" with increased blood flow as they become active.
    The volunteers all enjoyed some gambling, ranging from off-course betting on race horses and football matches to playing slot machines, scratch cards and lotteries. All but one volunteer -who had been moderate for a year gambled at least once a week. Bets ranged from five people who routinely spent ￡ 10—100 a day on gambling and two who were willing to drop over ￡10 000. Perhaps not surprisingly, 13 of the volunteers would have been considered to have an excessive gambling habit on conventional tests.
    The researchers found that those who scored highest in gambling severity also showed the most activity in the midbrain area in response to near misses. This area of the brain is of interest to researchers because it is where dopamine (多巴胺), a neurotransmitter, is produced. Dopamine has been implicated in other addiction studies. It could be the near misses that enhance dopamine transmission in gamblers who suffer the most severe problems, the study suggests. Which means it might be possible to find treatments that reduce dopamine transmission in the brain to take some of the compulsion out of gambling.
What is the main idea of the passage?
选项 A、Near misses could heighten gambling addiction.
B、Gamblers have wrong notions of gambling.
C、Compulsive gambling is hard to abandon.
D、How gambling wrecks your lives.
答案A
解析 主旨大意题。本文第一段统领全文，介绍真正赌徒会有差一点就能赢的那种激动心情，也就是近乎命中，会在大脑中产生强大的反应，使得一个人更加难以控制自己的赌瘾。下文也都是围绕这一点展开。因此答案为A)。
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