Obesity and gambling: neurocognitive and clinical associations.
OBJECTIVE
Research on health correlates in gamblers has found an association between gambling and obesity. The neurocognitive underpinnings of impulsivity may be useful targets for understanding and ultimately treating individuals with both gambling and obesity problems.


METHOD
207 non-treatment seeking young adults (18-29 years) with subsyndromal gambling disorder were recruited from the community. Subjects were grouped according to weight ('normal weight' BMI<25, 'overweight' BMI≥25; or 'obese' BMI≥30). Measures relating to gambling behaviour and objective computerized neurocognitive measures were collected.


RESULTS
Of the 207 subjects, 22 (10.6%) were obese and 49 (23.7%) were overweight. The obese gamblers consumed more nicotine (packs per day equivalent) and reported losing more money per week to gambling. Obese gamblers exhibited significant impairments in terms of reaction times for go trials on the stop-signal test (SST), quality of decision making and risk adjustment on the Cambridge Gamble Test (CGT), and sustained attention on the rapid visual information processing task (RVP).


CONCLUSION
Obesity was associated with decision making and sustained attention impairments in gamblers, along with greater monetary loss due to gambling. Future work should use longitudinal designs to examine the temporal relationship between these deficits, weight, other impulsive behaviour, and functional impairment.
['Grant|J E|JE|', 'Derbyshire|K|K|', 'Leppink|E|E|', 'Chamberlain|S R|SR|']
D000328:Adult D001288:Attention D015992:Body Mass Index D003657:Decision Making D005260:Female D005715:Gambling D006801:Humans D007175:Impulsive Behavior D008297:Male D009483:Neuropsychological Tests D009765:Obesity D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales D011930:Reaction Time D012309:Risk-Taking D013223:Statistics as Topic D013647:Task Performance and Analysis
obesity gambling impulsivity cognition