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Purpose . Gambling disorder has been recently reclassified under the category ‘‘substance-related and addictive disorders”. Recent studies performed through functional MRI (fMRI) have shown that the perseverance of some behaviors can alter brain activation [1,2]. In this work we aim at investigating functional connectivity changes in pathological gamblers (PGs) in comparison to healthy controls (HCs) by means of resting state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (rs-fMRI). Methods and materials. Thirteen HCs and fourteen PGs were recruited (all right handed males; drugs free; mean age 36 ± 10 yrs). All acquisitions were performed through a 1,5 T MRI scanner using a 8-channels phased-array head coil. Multi-session temporal concatenated Independent Component Analysis (concat-ICA) was carried out to achieve activations information on functionally linked brain regions. The resulted components were then matched and compared between groups. Correction for multiple comparisons across space was applied assuming an overall significance of p < temporal gyrus, right insula, right cerebellar hemisphere cortex and cerebellar vermis. Conclusion. We can conclude that an hyperconnectivity together with an overactivation of specific regions is observed in PGs. The persistent activation of specific functional networks during gambling tasks might represent the neurofunctional basis of PGs statereduced triggering threshold to gaming underlying the clinical features of gambling disorder. These preliminary results confirms the crucial role of fMRI studies to investigate brain networks and their changes in specific clinical functional disorders.

The paper presents Gambling Disorder within a Jungian perspective. In all cultures, one archetypical image is God creating the world as he plays, and play is a place of transformation and meaning par excellence, where the individual can find space for creativity and potentiality. For children, play is a primary activity that regulates normal psychic development; for adults, it is a potential space where oneself and one's potential can be rediscovered. Perhaps it is an exasperated and mad paidia that characterizes pathological gambling, where, within the rules and rituals that are obeyed to the extreme, freedom is between chance and necessity. The land of Hades is the land of the pathological gambler, where time is no longer, where there is no progress or change, an eternal present realm with no vision of the future, only death. The analytic relationship can help find a clearing in the complex inner negotiation that led to the pathology, where a different way of being that person can be imagined, where the psychologist is an 'activator of images' (Pedraza) that accompanies the individual towards integrating the illness into his whole psyche., Mediterranean Journal of Clinical Psychology, Vol 4, No 3 (2016)

This study aims at the assessment of alexithymia and anger levels in 100 treatment-seeking pathological gamblers compared with controls, who were matched for age, gender and education. Furthermore a positive correlation between alexithymia, anger and severity of gambling disorder and a relationship between gambling behaviour and anger after controlling for alexithymia, are investigated. Finally the role that gender plays in anger in pathological gamblers was also evaluated. Psychological assessment includes the South Oaks Gambling Screen, State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory-2 and the twenty-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale. Statistical analysis of the results shows a higher level of anger in pathological gamblers than in controls, together with alterations in emotional processing. Severity of gambling behaviour positively correlates with alexithymia scores, state-anger and trait-anger. Moreover, a significant contribution of anger in predicting gambling behaviour was suggested after controlling for alexithymia. In conclusion, anger and alexithymia must be regarded as relevant components of the assessment of pathological gamblers, in order to select the best therapeutical strategies to prevent self-defeating behaviours and to reduce drop-out from treatments.