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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  41
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.
The study by Dr. Chase and Dr. Clark shows that normal healthy volunteers______.
选项 A、were not affected by near misses
B、were active only in monetary wins
C、proved to be affected by near misses
D、participated in gambling actively
答案C
解析 细节推断题。定位句指出，Chase博士和Clark博士发现身体健康的志愿者中，参与游戏的志愿者即使由于近乎命中而分文未赢，他们大脑的部分区域仍然表现活跃，就像是赢了钱一般。由此推测．近乎命中对他们都有影响，故答案为C)。
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