Cocaine users make riskier decisions after losing a gamble
The results suggest that altered neural processing of risk and reward drives people with cocaine use disorder to take further risks to regain a lost reward, helping researchers to understand why cocaine users tend to make risky decisions despite the potential negative outcomes. "This paradoxical relationship between how someone acts in response to a loss can give us clues for how to develop better interventions and how to track the recovery of the brain from cocaine addiction," said first author Joshua Gowin, of the University of California San Diego, where the research was completed, and of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Maryland. In the study, 29 participants diagnosed with cocaine use disorder and 40 healthy control participants performed a Risky Gains Task, in which they could earn money by choosing between three monetary values -- the lowest value being the safest option and higher values being riskier. Dr. Gowin and colleagues...