Validation of novel fMRI paradigms in gambling disorder
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Validation of the novel Reward-Enriched Roulette and 6-Armed Cue Reactivity tasks for multi-modality brain imaging in gambling disorder
IRAS ID
264464
Contact name
David Erritzoe
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College London
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
NA, NA
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 11 months, 26 days
Research summary
Brain imaging studies have shown inconsistent activation of the reward system during monetary reward processing in gambling disorder patients (GDs) and the differences between the processing of gambling-related and non-gambling-related stimuli, such as social, nature and art have not been specifically investigated in GDs. Studying the brain activity associated with these processes will advance our understanding of the pathophysiology and the findings could potentially be utilized for gambling disorder assessment and treatment evaluation.
This will be an fMRI imaging study in GDs and age-gender-matched healthy volunteers aged 20 to 65 years. GDs will be identified and recruited from the waiting list of the National Problem Gambling Clinic, Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust and associated services. All participants will each undergo a screening session and an MRI scanning session that includes structural and functional task and resting-state MRI scans. The reward-enriched roulette task (RER) aims at probing into the brain reward circuitry with a computer-simulated roulette wheel game and the 6-Armed Cue Reactivity task (6-ACR) intends to examine the differences in reward and salience systems activation in response to gambling, social, food, art, nature and neutral video cues. All screening procedures and assessments will take place in the NIHR Imperial Clinical Research Facility and MRI brain imaging will be acquired in Invicro imaging centre, both located at the Hammersmith Hospital campus in London.
The two novel fMRI paradigms will be validated and the association between brain activity and clinical variables including gambling severity, personality traits, loneliness scale and social network indices will also be explored. These tasks are planned to be implemented in future simultaneous PET/MR multimodal brain imaging studies to further investigate the brain activation and the release of neurotransmitters at the same time in GDs.
REC name
London - Surrey Borders Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/LO/0387
Date of REC Opinion
2 Jun 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion