Compulsive gamblers may be wired to prefer money to sex

Sciencemag.org reports that compulsive gamblers may be more turned on by money than sex.

This thesis emerged from the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting held November 9–13, which reportedly attracted 30,000 to the San Diego Convention Center.

Guillaume Sescousse of Radboud University Nijmegan in the Netherlands gave magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tests to 18 pathological gamblers. Prior to the test, they said they valued money and sex equally. But their brains reacted 4 percent faster to images of money than pictures of sexy women.

It's possible that the gamblers' sensitivity to rewarding activities such as sex may be so blunted that gambling is the only thing that still brings pleasure, said neuroscientist George Koob, an alcoholism expert at Scripps Research Institute.