Losing a night’s sleep ‘can turn you into a reckless gambler’
March 8th, 2011 - 2:58 pm ICT by ANILondon, Mar 8 (ANI): A new study has shown that losing even a night’s sleep can turn a gambler reckless.
Scott Huettel at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, showed that a single night of sleep deprivation is enough to shift a typical gambling strategy of defending against potential losses to one in which bigger risks are taken in pursuit of greater prizes.
For the study, Huettel prevented 29 adults from sleeping throughout the night. Then he asked them to complete a set of gambling tasks while scanning their brain using fMRI.
Results showed that those who slept well didn’t exhibit risky betting behaviours, but the sleep-deprived changed their behaviour to pursue big wins even though this meant taking greater risks.
This coincided with increased brain activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area instrumental in computing value. They also showed decreased activity in the right anterior insula following decisions that led to losses - an area linked to negative emotions.
“Taken together these effects may push people toward maladaptive behaviour: seeking gains while ignoring negative consequences,” New Scientist quoted Huettel as saying.
However, feeling fine after a sleepless night is no guarantee that you can think straight.
The study appears in The Journal of Neuroscience. (ANI)
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Tags: adults, behaviours, brain activity, decisions, duke university, durham north carolina, gambler, insula, london, losses, maladaptive behaviour, negative consequences, negative emotions, new scientist, prizes, sleep, sleep deprivation, sleepless night, ventromedial prefrontal cortex