A roadmap for transformative translational research on gambling disorder in the UK

Abstract

The UK has one of the highest rates of recreational gambling in the world. Some vulnerable individuals progressively lose control over gambling and develop at-risk gambling or gambling disorder (GD), characterised by the compulsive pursuit of gambling. GD destroys lives and incurs massive costs to societies, yet only a few treatments are available. Failure to develop a wider range of interventions is in part due to a lack of funding that has slowed progress in the translational research necessary to understand the individual vulnerability to switch from controlled to compulsive gambling. Current preclinical models of GD do not operationalise the key clinical features of the human condition. The so-called “gambling tasks” for non-human mammals almost exclusively assess probabilistic decision-making, which is not real-world gambling. While they have provided insights into the psychological and neural mechanisms involved in the processing of gains and losses, these tasks have failed to capture those underlying real-world gambling and its compulsive manifestation in humans. Here, we highlight the strengths and weaknesses of current gambling-like behaviour tasks and suggest how their translational validity may be improved. We then propose a theoretical framework, the incentive habit theory of GD, which may prove useful for the operationalisation of the biobehavioural mechanisms of GD in preclinical models. We conclude with a list of recommendations for the development of next-generation preclinical models of GD and discuss how modern techniques in animal behavioural experimentation can be deployed in the context of GD preclinical research to bolster the translational pipeline.

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