Studies have shown that people who have won gambling games as lotteries or bingos want compulsively to win and keep winning, not caring even to risk what they have achieved in order to win again.

This shows that having a lot of money does not diminish the greed for it. And it is that the brain seeks tirelessly to possess more and more. Why is this feeling given?

The brain awakens in itself an avidity to have more, what in Neurosciences we call "appetitive phase". This is the behavior that motivates that despite losing at the hands of cards or roulette wheel respectively, we continue to seek profit even being "plucked" again and again, because the risk is attractive to the brain when playing for money.

The false predictions of profit that we make to ourselves, make it so tempting to keep playing, that the fear of losing and "staying on the street" is covered up.

Neuroimaging studies showed very clearly that the appetitive phase powerfully activated the neurons of the nucleus accumbent, part of what is known as the cerebral mechanism of search and reward. This happens because the appetitive phase promotes a high secretion of dopamine, the neurotransmitter of pleasure, and it directly activates the nucleus accumbent in a much more powerful way than even receiving a reward. That is why the mere fact of playing, just thinking (even highly irrational) in a very difficult prize, motivates more and can lead to degenerate the brain reward mechanism, which is activated not by the prize but by the same search. That is the principle of the mechanism of addictions.

To this highly avid activity of the nucleus accumbent, the amygdala responds in a “demurer” way, by giving it a term. This behaves responding more intensely to the results obtained than to the search itself.

These apparent functional contradictions, however, show that in the face of the possibility of earning money, a true cerebral whirlwind is unleashed that is much more intense than the possession of money itself. That is to say, it becomes a reality that success is a path and not a destination. Although in these cases, may have connotations even pathological.

However, this tendency to seek something minimizing the risks saved our lives on numerous occasions during the transit of man on the face of the earth. When we depended exclusively on our hunting to feed ourselves, the fact of not getting the food, and having to take more risks to do so, ignoring the risk that this entailed, we could overcome all the vicissitudes even at the risk of our own lives to obtain the vital livelihood. But today, this same mechanism is what led many people to lose everything behind gambling and bets.

Primitive brain mechanisms that allowed our survival, today cause much damage. Ironies of the brain that have us permanently FROM THE HEAD ...