News | Centre for Gambling Research at UBC

Luke at AGRI Conference Luke will be speaking at the Alberta Gambling Research Institute (AGRI) Conference this Friday on the “media portrayal of sports betting in Canada before and after Bill C-218”

Anushka and Paul at PURC Anushka and Paul presented their Honour’s projects at the UBC Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference (PURC) last weekend. Follow the links below to access Anushka’s poster. Anushka Gulani “The Effect of Monetary Reward Uncertainty on Consumption Behaviours”

Luke on CBC News Luke was interviewed by CBC News to speak about the structural characteristics and risks associated with sports betting. Visit the link below to watch the full interview: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1.7161913

Raymond delivering guest lectures for Psyc 101 Raymond recently delivered two guest lectures for the undergraduate course Psyc 101, where he delved into research on decision-making and executive functions.

Raymond at ASTU Seminar Raymond facilitated a discussion in the undergraduate student-directed seminar ASTU 400K 201: “Cyberpsychology and Digital Technology Addiction”. He presented his research findings on the benefits and consequences associated with the passive consumption of video games and gambling.

Luke on ICRG Webinar Luke will be speaking at the International Center for Responsible Gaming webinar this Thursday on the migration from video gaming to gambling in young adults. Click here to register for this free program.

Welcome Adam and Matthew! We’re happy to welcome Adam Chun and Matthew Fetterly in joining our lab as research assistants this term. They will be working with Charlotte and Raymond respectively.

Fiza speaking at CBH seminar Fiza will be presenting her research “Audiovisual Cues, Game Immersion, and Performance” as part of the Behavioural Neuroscience Seminars this Friday. Visit here for more information!

JOURNAL CLUB: Studying personal control Charlotte and Luke led a discussion in this week’s journal club looking at a recent paper by Bukowski and colleagues. This paper examines the construct validity of autobiographical recall as an experimental manipulation of personal control. Bukowski, M., Potoczek, A., Barzykowski, K., Lautenbacher, J., & Inzlicht, M. (2024). What do we manipulate when reminding people […]

CBC Marketplace: The Big Gamble Luke was featured in the new episode of CBC Marketplace on sports gambling ads, where he discussed the effect of audio-visual cues on risky decision-making during gambling tasks. Click here for the full video!

Welcome Julia! A warm welcome to Julia Makalintal, who will be working with Fiza as a COGS 402 student!

CGR Funding Announcement We are thrilled by the announcement this month of a renewed investment of $1.375 million over five years from the BC government and the British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC) for the Centre for Gambling Research. We were privileged to host the Honourable Mike Farnworth, Deputy Premier, and Minister for Public Safety and Solicitor General, Dean […]

NEW PROJECT: Slot Machines and Emotional States in the Casino Lab We’re recruiting students to participate in a 60-minute in-person study for 1.5 HSP credit. Check out the study link below for more details! https://ubc-psych.sona-systems.com/default.aspx?p_return_experiment_id=2634

NEW PROJECT: Gambling and Consumption We are recruiting students to participate in a 60-minute in-person study for 1.5 HSP credit. Check out the study link below for more details! https://ubc-psych.sona-systems.com/default.aspx?p_return_experiment_id=2629

JOURNAL CLUB: Interoception and impulsivity in addictions In this week’s lab meeting, Charlotte and Lucas led a discussion on a new review paper by Herman. The paper looked at the role of interoception in the development and maintenance of substance use addictions. Herman, A. M. (2023). Interoception within the context of impulsivity and addiction. Current Addiction Reports, 10(2), 97-106. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40429-023-00482-7

Raymond on USyd TRG Webinar early career researcher showcase Raymond was recently featured on the University of Sydney webinar series ‘Technology, Risk-taking, and Gambling’, where he presented his research on the relationship between problem gambling, coping through gambling and watching gambling streams. The recording can be accessed here.

NEW PROJECT: The psychology of microtransaction in Genshin Impact We are currently recruiting student participants for a 30-minute online survey. If you have played the game Genshin Impact recently, you can participate through the link before for HSP credit! https://ubc-psych.sona-systems.com/default.aspx?p_return_experiment_id=2624

Welcome Charlotte!! Charlotte Eben is officially joining CGR as a post-doctoral fellow! She recently finished her post-doc at Ghent University in Belgium, and her research focuses on the emotional and physiological responses to gambling episodes.

Zhang Chen visiting CGR We’re excited to host Dr. Zhang Chen from Ghent University in the lab for the next 2 weeks, timed to coincide with the Society for Neuroeconomics meeting. Zhang is presenting in the Cognitive Area Workshop on “Pauses in play increase people’s sensitivity to expected value in risky choice”.

Hin at the Society of Neuroeconomics Conference Hin will be attending the Society of Neuroeconomics Annual Meeting (SNE 2023) in downtown Vancouver over the weekend. If you’re at the conference, come and say hi!

CGR at RANGES 2023 Futures of Gambling Studies Conference Claudia and Jay attended the Research and Networking for Gambling Early-Career Scholars (RANGES) virtual conference last Thursday. Claudia presented a poster on gambling stream consumption ‘Is watching gambling livestreams associated with intentions to gamble among non-gambling young adults? An application of theory of planned behaviour’, and Jay presented a poster on virtual item valuation ‘More […]

Luke speaking at ICRG annual meeting in Las Vegas Luke is giving a plenary session on gambling – gaming convergence, at the International Center for Responsible Gaming annual meeting in Las Vegas this week, titled “The gamblers of the future? Migration from video games to gambling among young adults”. He will also be presenting in the afternoon panel session on cashless gambling.

JOURNAL CLUB: Scoping review on online sports betting features In this week’s lab meeting, Paul led a discussion on a scoping review paper by Torrance and colleagues looking at the structural characteristics of online sports betting, where they found the prevalence of fast-paced and continuous betting opportunities has transformed sports betting into a more harmful gambling mode. Torrance, J., O’Hanrahan, M., Carroll, J., & Newall, […]

Luke speaking at GLUG conference Luke is giving an invited talk at the Bochum Conference on Gambling and Society (GLUG) this week on “Understanding the Risk Profile of Slot Machine Gambling”

Welcome new undergrads Anushka, Amanda, Ana, and Marshall! We’re happy to welcome our incoming undergrads this year: Anushka Gulan (Honours) and Amanda Ding (volunteer RA) will be joining Lucas on a reward uncertainty replication study. Ana Hernandez (PSYC 240) will be working with Raymond, and Marshall Martin (volunteer RA) is going to work with Hin on a scoping review project.

NEW PAPER: Systematic review on loss chasing Congrats to Akira Banerjee, a PhD student at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium, for leading this important new scoping review on different expressions of loss chasing in the gambling literature, which especially highlights the important differences between ‘between session’ and ‘within session’ measures of chasing. Banerjee N, Chen Z, Clark L, Noel X. […]

Congrats to Jay on receiving WLIURA! Congratulations to Jay Joo on receiving a second round of Work Learn International Undergraduate Research Awards (WLIURA)! Jay will be continuing his work on virtual item valuation this school year.

On the radio: Luke talking about athletes in sports betting ads Listen to Luke this Thursday on the Mike Smyth show on CKNW 980, talking about the announcement from Ontario to ban athletes and celebrities from gambling advertisements.

Lucas presenting at International Conference on Behavioral Addictions Lucas travelled to South Korea this week to present his loot box project at the 8th International Conference on Behavior Addictions (ICBA2023): ‘Longitudinal link between loot box spending and gambling initiation in a sample of Canadian video game players’

CGR Open House 30 August! We’re hosting an open house event on Wednesday, 30 August, 1 – 2pm, for students who are interested in undergraduate research openings (including COGS 402 projects, but also Directed Studies or voluntary placements). This is an informal event and an opportunity to see the lab, meet the team, tell us about your interests. The open […]

NEW PRE-PRINT: Lucas’ paper on near-miss effect A new manuscript is available from Lucas Palmer’s project looking at the impact of near-miss outcomes on subjective ratings (motivation, valence) and behavioural measures with jackpot size (i.e. the rollover effect) using online slot machine simulations. This article is part of Lucas’ MA thesis and is available on PsyArxiv https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/s7qe5/

CGR Lab Outing CGR headed down to Richmond for lab outing this week!

Congrats to Gabriel Brooks for successful PhD Final Defense!! Huge congrats to Gabe who successfully defended his PhD dissertation on Friday!! His dissertation is titled ‘Gambling-related cognitive distortions: their associations, measurement, and utility to assess gamblification in video games’. We are very grateful to Gabe’s committee members, Profs Todd Handy and Joelle LeMoult, as well as his University and External Examiners.

JOURNAL CLUB: loot box purchasers vs earners In this week’s lab meeting, we looked at a new paper from the University of Waterloo by Chanel Larche. Its main focus was investigating the differences between players who obtain loot boxes through purchasing and in-game progress. Larche, C. J., Chini, K., Lee, C., & Dixon, M. J. (2023). To Pay or Just Play? Examining […]

Congrats to Ke on receiving the NCPG Dissertation Award! Big congrats to recent CGR graduate & alum Dr Ke Zhang who has received the Dr Durand Jacobs Dissertation Award from the National Council on Problem Gambling (USA) for her PhD dissertation ‘Chasing in Online Gambling and its Practical Application in Gambling Intervention’

Congrats to Raymond on his successful MA thesis defense! Huge congratulations to Raymond who successfully defended his MA thesis, titled ‘Impulse and Reason: Justifications in Problem Gambling’. Thank you to Profs Jiaying Zhao and Kristin Laurin for serving on Raymond’s examining committee! The thesis can be accessed here

PREPRINT!! Hin’s paper on the lottery rollover effect We have a new manuscript available from Hin Fu’s project looking at the socioeconomic correlates of how lottery sales fluctuate with jackpot size (i.e. the rollover effect), in a dataset from Toronto that Hin has previously worked on with Ross Otto (McGill). This article has not yet been through peer review but is available on […]

CGR loot box research covered on the BASIS We’re excited that the BASIS, run by the Harvard Division on Addictions, have featured Gabriel Brooks’ recent paper on migration effects from video game loot boxes to gambling https://basisonline.org/2023/07/11/relationship-loot-box-engagement-gambling-behavior-over-time/

PSYC240 portal is now open The Centre for Gambling Research is one of many psychology labs participating in the Psyc 240 program, and the portal for applications has just opened this week! This is an elective course designed for UBC undergrads who are looking to gain research experience. At CGR, we approach Psyc 240 as a research access program, for […]

Luke in London for CAGR and the International Think Tank meetings Luke is speaking at the back-to-back meeting in the UK this week, on Raymond Wu’s project looking at gambling streams on Twitch. At the International Think Tank meeting at the Royal Society of Medicine, he is giving a primer on ‘Gambling streams on Twitch’ and at the following Current Advances in Gambling Research conference at […]

BCLC Player Health series Luke, Lucas and Raymond are given a virtual session in the BCLC’s Player Health workshop, considering our work on gambling and video gaming from the parent’s perspective “Are your kids gaming with loot boxes?!”, and we are grateful to former Psyc 335 student Monica Hinch for her infographic on this topic, available on our Publications […]

In the news: Luke interviewed by Vancouver Sun on sports betting Luke is featured in this article in today’s Vancouver Sun on the mounting backlash across Canada on gambling advertisements during televised sports

CGR at the UNLV International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking We have an exciting week ahead with a number of CGR folk presenting at the largest conference in the gambling field, the International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, in Las Vegas. Luke is presenting Xiaolei’s PhD data on Day 1: “Pareto effects in the eCasino: differences across online products and links with self-exclusion” Raymond […]

CGR theory paper covered in GREO Research Snapshot Gambling Research Exchange Ontario has covered Luke’s review article on the mechanism behind reward uncertainty in behavioural addiction: https://www.greo.ca/Modules/EvidenceCentre/Details/how-do-reward-mechanisms-affect-behavioural-addictions Paper: Clark, L., & Zack, M. (2023). Engineered highs: Reward variability and frequency as potential prerequisites of behavioural addiction. Addictive Behaviors, 140, 107626. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2023.107626

Welcome to Shayden Schofield-Lewis! With the start of the summer term, Shayden will be joining us as a graduate-level directed studies student! This seminar-based course will focus on the cognitive and behavioural neuroscience of sports betting. Welcome Shayden!

Raymond at PsycFest Raymond Wu will be presenting his project on justifications in disordered gambling at PsycFest. In this annual event, second-year MA and new Ph.D. students present their research projects to the UBC psychology community.

Paul, Velika, and Claudia presenting at PURC Paul and Velika presented their Psychology Honour’s projects and Claudia presented her Directed Studies project at the Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference (PURC) over the weekend. Their posters can be accessed through the links below Paul Weston ‘Legalizing Sports Betting Changed Canadian Newspapers: Print Media Trends Before and After Legalization‘ Velika Kristianto ‘Tip or Bet?: Cheering […]

Congrats to Ke Zhang for successful PhD Final Defense!! Huge congrats to Ke who successfully defended her PhD dissertation on Friday!! Her thesis is titled ‘Chasing in Online Gambling and its Practical Application in Gambling Intervention’ and we are very grateful to Ke’s committee members, Profs Jiaying Zhao and Jason Rights, as well as her University and External Examiners. The thesis can be accessed […]

PURC keynote talk It’s an honour to give the faculty keynote at the annual Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference (PURC) at UBC. Luke will be speaking about our research on loot boxes, titled “The gamblers of the future? Understanding the links between loot boxes and gambling”

JOURNAL CLUB: Habit-forming design in digital technologies For our journal club this week, we’re looking at a new theory paper by Maeva Flayelle and colleagues, in Nature Reviews Psychology, thinking about structural features of digital technologies (social media, sports betting, video games) in terms of the model-based / model-free framework for compulsive over-use. Flayelle M, Brevers D, King DL, Maurage P, Perales […]

Luke and Raymond featured in Global News and CTV News articles Following the New Horizons conference, Luke and Raymond are featured in Global News and CTV news articles about the migration effect from loot boxes to gambling and the characteristics of gambling stream viewers.

New Horizons session on Emerging Forms We’re looking forward to the New Horizons conference this week, back in person in downtown Vancouver. CGR is curating a session on Understanding Emerging Forms of Gambling, with 3 speakers including Luke (“The gamblers of the future? Understanding the links between loot boxes and gambling”), Lucas Palmer (“ Migration from loot box use to conventional […]

JOURNAL CLUB: Daily diary monitoring in regular gamblers In this week’s lab meeting, Raymond led the discussion looking at a new paper from Sunghwan Yi, University of Guelph using a daily diary technique to look at fluctuations in gambling and self-control Yi S, Goldstein A, Luo H, Haefner SA. “A Daily Diary Investigation of Self-Regulation in Gambling.” Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1037/adb0000884.

NEW PAPER on loot boxes in Computers in Human Behavior Very excited about our new paper from Gabriel Brooks’ PhD work, the first longitudinal study linking engagement with video game loot boxes to later gambling initiation in young adults. The paper is Open Access thru the publisher, and you can access the preprint thru the CGR publications page Brooks GA & Clark L. The gamblers […]

Luke and Ke representing CGR at Lisbon Addictions 2022 Luke is travelling to Portugal this week to present at the largest of the European addictions meeting, in a programme that features a lot of research on gambling and behavioural addictions. He will be presenting Mario’s PhD data on Wednesday “Characterizing habit formation in modern slot machine gambling” Ke is presenting virtually at the conference […]

Welcome Charlotte Eben! CGR will be hosting Charlotte Eben, a visiting post-doc from Belgium, in the lab for a roughly 2-week visit. Charlotte is a cognitive psychologist with interests in the illusion of control and changes in response speed after wins vs losses. She also has a lot of first-hand experience with various open science practices. Welcome Charlotte!

JOURNAL CLUB: Aha! Experiences and risk taking In this week’s lab meeting, Fiza led a discussion looking at a new preprint from Yuhua Yu looking at how insight moments (Aha! experiences) during problem solving affect subsequent risk taking. Yu Y et al “Solving problems with an Aha! increases risk propensity” PsyArXiv

JOURNAL CLUB: Reward uncertainty and effects on consumption In this week’s lab meeting, Luke and Lucas led a discussion looking at a new paper from Bangor University in the UK, by Paul Rauwolf and colleagues. This paper uses an interesting ‘dice shaker’ procedure to induce a state of monetary reward uncertainty and anticipation, and examines the effects on consumption and taste intensity of […]

Welcome! Incoming Honours project students Velika Kristianto and Paul Weston The start of term means we have a number of new trainees joining the lab. This is the first year that we have taken on two Honours students at the same time – Velika is going to join our Twitch team, and Paul is going to take on one of our first projects looking at […]

Eliscia at AGRI Eliscia Sinclair is representing the Centre at the Alberta Gambling Research Institute annual conference this week, in fabulous Banff. Eliscia is presenting a poster on her project looking at the gender publication gap in the field of gambling research: Sinclair E & Clark L. Examining the Gender Publication Gap in Gambling Research and Addiction Science. […]

Lucas speaking at ICBA Lucas is presenting this week at the International Conference on Behavioural Addictions (ICBA) in Nottingham, UK, in a symposium on new developments in gambling research. Palmer L & Clark L. The near-miss in online slot machine gambling: a pre-registered conceptual replication.

Congrats to Lucas on his MA defense! Huge congratulations to Lucas who successfully defended in his MA thesis today, entitled ‘The near-miss effect in online slot machine gambling: a series of conceptual replications’. Big thank you to Profs Beck Todd and Ara Norenzayan for serving on Lucas’s examining committee! The thesis can be accessed here

Ke presenting at Centre for Brain Health retreat Ke Zhang is speaking at the DM Centre for Brain Health annual retreat, taking place this week at UBCO. Ke’s talk is called ‘Expression of Chasing in the eCasino’

Welcome new undergrad RAs to the lab!! We’re happy to welcome a colossal SIX new undergrads to the lab this summer term, which I think is our largest intake since before the pandemic. Kamran Mahboob (COGS 402) and Jaden Chen (2nd year Behavioural Neuroscience) are joining our project on video game loot boxes. Isaac Koenig-Workman (4th year Psychology and former Psyc 335 […]

Sports Gambling Ads and the Stanley Cup Playoffs Luke was interviewed by CBC Kelowna on the Daybreak South radio show about the rise in sports gambling ads for people watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The link is to the full show but the relevant section is from 1:45 to 1:53.

NEW PAPER: Gabe Brooks on schizotypy and gambling cognitions New paper from the lab just published at Journal of Behavioral Addictions. The starting point for this study was asking whether delusional beliefs in schizophrenia might have some mechanistic overlap with gambling cognitive distortions (e.g. superstitious beliefs). Across 3 separate data-sets, we find strong support for that hypothesis, and in fact the associations with schizotypy […]

Congrats to our graduating students!! Huge congrats to Eliscia Sinclair, Ayush Kathuria, Harresh Thayakaanthan, Isaac Koenig-Workman, and indeed to all of the UBC graduates with ceremonies this week. Big thanks to the 4 of you for your time and help with our research projects, and we wish you all good things for your future careers!

Luke at APS Chicago Luke is presenting this week at the Association for Psychological Sciences conference in Chicago, in a session called ““Substance use without a substance: the risk factors and mechanisms of gambling”, alongside UBC alum Mariya Cherkasova, plus Timur Sevincer & Jon Grant. Luke’s talk is called ‘In the Zone? Eye Tracking of Slot Machine Gambling and […]

UK CAGR conference Luke is presenting one of the keynote talks this week at the Current Advances in Gambling Research meeting, which is the second conference for the UK’s Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling. He’ll be speaking about ‘People, Products and Environments: Towards a Comprehensive Account of Gambling Harm’.

Youtube seminar ‘Gambling and Bipolar Disorder’ Luke is featured in this online seminar about gambling and financial difficulties in people with bipolar disorder, as part of the TalkBD YouTube series, for CREST.BD (UBC Department of Psychiatry), hosted by Dr Erin Michalak and also featuring Dr Thomas Richardson (Southampton Uni, UK), live streamed on 9 May 2022

CGR Open House 6 May! We’re hosting an open house event this Friday, 6 May, 3 – 4pm, for students who are interested in undergraduate research openings (including COGS 402 projects, but also Directed Studies or voluntary placements). This is an informal event and an opportunity to see the lab, meet the team, tell us about your interests. In person […]

Eliscia awarded the Psi Chi Distinguished Undergraduate Research Award!! Huge congrats to Eliscia Sinclair, recipient of this year’s Psi Chi Distinguished Undergraduate Research Award (DURA)!! Eliscia has been a research assistant at CGR since last summer when she held a Quinn student studentship, and she is involved in a number of exciting projects with us including an analysis of the ‘gender gap’ in publishing in […]

NEW PAPER: Lucas Palmer et al, scoping review of monetary format in gambling Congrats to Lucas who has his first publication in grad school, just out in International Gambling Studies: A scoping review of experimental manipulations examining the impact of monetary format on gambling behaviour. In a nutshell: People can pay for gambling in many different ways: besides cash, some casino games use chips, online gambling uses cards, […]

Lucas presenting this week at PsychFest One the big departmental milestones in our Masters program is that all MA2s present at the annual PsychFest. Lucas Palmer is representing CGR this year, and he’ll be speaking on ‘The Near-Miss in online slot machine gambling: a series of conceptual replications’ on Thursday 28 April.

Raymond Wu awarded NSERC fellowship for Masters program! Congrats to Raymond who has been awarded a highly competitive NSERC fellowship for his MA2 year under the CGS-M program.

NEW PAPER: Gambling and Loot Boxes Congrats to CGR alum Ben Sidloski for getting his Directed Studies report from 2021 published in the journal Addictive Behaviors! Sidloski B, Brooks G, Zhang K, Clark L. Exploring the association between loot boxes and problem gambling: are video gamers referring to loot boxes when they complete gambling screening tools? Addictive Behaviors, 2022, 107318. Doi: […]

Maya Thulin presenting at PURC Maya Thulin in conducting her Psychology Honours project at the Centre this year, and Maya is presenting at the Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference (PURC) this week with her poster entitled ‘Who is a Professional Gambler?’

CGR Journal Club ‘Gambling in Africa’ For CGR lab meeting this week, we watched an excellent documentary by BBC Africa Eye called ‘Gamblers Like Me’. Although the doc is from 2019, this is still a hugely topical programme and generated much discussion in the lab

Samantha presenting this week at MURC Samantha Ma is representing CGR at the Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Research Conference (MURC), with a poster on her Directed Studies project improving the data calibration from our eye-tracking study looking at a sensory feedback manipulation on modern slot machines.

CGR presentations at New Horizons in Responsible Gambling conference! Busy week for CGR at the New Horizons in Responsible Gambling annual conference, taking place virtually this week. As the theme of this year’s conference is commemorating a decade of New Horizons, Luke is giving an invited talk ‘Players, Products and Gambling Environments: New Directions’ as an update to his 2017 Horizons keynote on this […]

Welcome new undergrad RAs to the lab!! We’re very happy to welcome Kelly Tat and Eliscia Sinclair to the lab this term, both as Directed Studies project students. Kelly is starting on a new line of research on the links between boredom and gambling with Raymond, and Eliscia is picking up a project on the break even effect that she started under […]

CGR Open House We’re hosting an open house event this Friday, 11 December, 3 – 4pm, for students who are interested in undergraduate research openings (including COGS 402 projects, but also Directed Studies or voluntary placements). This is an informal event and an opportunity to see the lab, meet the team, tell us about your interests. In person […]

Welcome new undergrads to the lab! Big welcome to our incoming undergraduate RAs this year: Maya Thulin is joining as a 3rd year Psychology Honours student, interested in the concept of the ‘professional gambler’. Ayush Kathuria is joining our Twitch team, focussing on gambling mechanics in the chat on Twitch. Samantha Ma is joining the eye tracking and immersion project to […]

CGR Open House We’re hosting an open house event this Friday, 27 August, 3 – 4pm, for students who are interested in undergraduate research openings (including COGS 402 projects, but also Directed Studies or voluntary placements). This is an informal event and an opportunity to see the lab, meet the team, tell us about your interests. In person […]

Ke Zhang awarded the UBC Graduate Fellowship in Gambling Research! Congrats to Ke for being the first CGR trainee to be awarded the UBC Graduate Fellowship in Gambling Research. This is a fellowship supported by the British Columbia Lottery Corporation and adjudicated by the UBC Faculty of Arts.

Spencer awarded the NCPG Dissertation Award! Big congrats to CGR graduate & alum Dr Spencer Murch (now a postdoc at Concordia University) who has received the Dr Durand Jacobs Dissertation Award from the National Council on Problem Gambling (USA) for his PhD thesis ‘Behavioural and physiological correlates of immersion in gambling using electronic gaming machines’.

Welcome to our new RAs! A warm welcome to our new Research Assistants joining the lab this term. Eliscia Sinclair has been awarded a Department of Psychiatry Quinn summer studentship, to conduct a project on breaking even in gambling behaviour. And Dimitrios Avramidis has joined the lab for a Directed Studies project looking at gambling streams on Youtube and Twitch.

New Statesman article on online gambling data & tracking Luke is interviewed in this piece in the New Statesman on how gambling websites can use behavioural tracking for harm reduction but also for marketing purposes. Some discussion of our recent paper in IGS by Stephanie Finkenwirth et al.

University of Sydney, Technology, Risk-taking and Gambling (TRG) webinar Luke is one of the webinar discussants in Season 2 of the (highly recommended) University of Sydney TRG webinars organized by Kahlil Philander and Sally Gainsbury. This episode on ‘Cashless payments in gambling venues: what do we know and what do we need to know?’ also features Sally, Tom Swanton and Kasra Ghaharian https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pul8p6L6s8

New Horizons in Responsible Gambling conference Many thanks to the New Horizons conference team at BCLC for inviting the Centre to curate a session at the virtual conference this year. In the absence of a conventional poster session, we have moved to a data-blitz / lightning talk format featuring 6 short presentations by Gabriel Brooks, Osa Hawthorne, Fiza Arshad, Mario Ferrari, […]

PODCAST: Spencer on Jeff Does Vegas The recently-graduated Dr Spencer Murch is interviewed about his PhD research on slot machine immersion for this detailed discussion on the Jeff Does Vegas podcast. ‘Total immersion: the psychology of slot machines’, episode 84, also available on Spotify & AppStore.

All Bets Are Off podcast Luke was interviewed for the opening episode of Season 3 of the All Bets Are Off gambling podcast (UK), discussing online slot machine gambling and ‘slot streams’ https://open.spotify.com/episode/0hENhEuJY1ePdHmF62ajp5 This is an excellent podcast series and we recommend other episodes including Gambling in the Chinese Community (S3 E2) and Social Casino Games & Loot Boxes (S3 […]

CGR Newsletter Jan 2021 released Access our latest newsletter here

Luke speaking at University of Hamburg Luke is giving a virtual talk this week to the Psychology department at the University of Hamburg, on ‘Interacting effects of personal vulnerabilities and product features in gambling addiction’, invited by Timur Sevincer and Gabriele Oettingen.

Special Issue of International Gambling Studies on the Pathways Model Luke is co-editing, with Joel Billieux (U Lausanne) and David Ledgerwood (Wayne State Uni) a Special Issue commemorating 20 years of the Pathways Model of Problem Gambling (Blaszczynski & Nower 2002) to be published in International Gambling Studies in early 2022.

Luke quoted in CBC coverage on launch of N.B. online gambling platform The launch of a provincial online gambling platform in New Brunswick has raised a number of issues, including the impact of the pandemic on different forms of gambling, and the level of gambling on offshore online platforms. This article on CBC asked whether higher maximum bets & percentage returns on the new online slot machine games in […]

JOURNAL CLUB: chasing behaviour in online horse-race gambling Ke Zhang is presented a second Journal Club for December, on an interesting data science paper using survival models to look at days between sessions as measure of chasing in Finnish online horse-racing gamblers. On average, winners return 27% faster than losers. Kainulainen, T. Does Losing on a Previous Betting Day Predict How Long it […]

JOURNAL CLUB (December 2020) on cryptocurrency gambling Gabe Brooks is presenting our CGR journal club this week on a new paper from University of York (UK) on cryptocurrency gambling Scholten, Zendle & Walker (2020) nside the decentralised casino: A longitudinal study of actual cryptocurrency gambling transactions. PLoS ONE 15(10): e0240693. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240693

NEW PAPER with U Pitt colleagues on behavioural sensitivity to social rank Congrats to Jade Adalbert, whose Directed Studies project in the lab is part of a joint publication with our colleagues in Pittsburgh Psychiatry, published this week in PlosOne. This paper presents a new behavioural task to assess responses to social defeat and victory in a competitive game that involves a social hierarchy (effectively, a league […]

NEW PROJECT: Do you trade in the financial markets? In an ongoing study led by CGR Research Assistant Osa Hawthorne, we’re looking for people who engage in private financial trading to take part in a short (10 min) survey https://ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cMDR7mFwqwfHnH7

Spencer is graduating! Huge congratulations to Spencer Murch, the first CGR grad student to graduate with PhD! We’re a little sad for Spencer that the ceremony this year is being held online but we’re very proud of him reaching this important milestone.

Luke speaking in Psychology Student Association ‘Prof talks’ series Luke is speaking to the Department of Psychology PSA this evening as part of their Prof Talks series, talking about research opportunities, careers in academic, and studying during the pandemic.

Luke speaking at ISAM / CSAM addictions conference Luke is speaking in a virtual symposium on behavioural addictions at the joint annual meeting of the International Society for Addiction Medicine (ISAM) and the Canadian Society for Addiction Medicine (CSAM), which was due to be hosted in Victoria BC this week. Title: ‘Interacting effects of personal vulnerabilities and product features in gambling addiction’.

NEW PAPER: using machine learning to predict gambling problems on the BC PlayNow platform Congratulations to Stephanie Finkenwirth and Kent Macdonald, who have lead this data science project using data from the BCLC’s PlayNow platform. Published in International Gambling Studies, we apply machine learning to 1 year of online gambling transactions from the eCasino (online slot machines and table games) to predict self-exclusion status as a marker of gambling […]

Spencer talking at UK Safer Gambling Forum Spencer is giving an online talk this week in the UK Safer Gambling Forum eGaming workshop, on “What is Slot Machine Immersion: How does it affect our experiences and behaviours?” https://www.safergamblingforum.com/agenda/session/436150

Luke speaking at Society for Psychophysiology Research conference Luke is speaking this week at the virtual SPR conference that was due to be hosted in Vancouver. He will be chairing and speaking in the session ‘Risky Business’ on Wed 7 Oct, on ‘How slot machine design features harness brain systems for risk and reward’. Looking forward to the other talks by Ross Otto […]

Luke quoted in The Province: gambling, COVID-19 and calls to the BC gambling helpline Quotes from Luke Clark in The Province article: the headline is a 20% drop in calls to the BC gambling telephone helpline since the start of the COVID pandemic. Although, as casinos have been fully closed for the duration of this time, and sports betting also substantially affected, an alternative perspective is that the fact […]

Welcome to our incoming undergraduates, Kaycee and Ben! We are delighted to take on two students for projects this Fall term. Kaycee Realina is a Psychology Honors project student, who will be working with Mario on his habit project. Ben Sidloski returns to the lab to do a Directed Studies project in which he’ll be running some secondary analyses on Gabe’s loot box […]

NCPG Research Award! In July 2020, the National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) in the US gave their Annual Research Award to Spencer’s paper in Addiction, titled ‘Zoned in or zoned out? Investigating immersion in slot machine gambling using mobile eye‐tracking’. Congratulations to Spencer and hats off to a substantial team of colleagues and collaborators without whom this […]

Watch Spencer’s USyd webinar on youtube Spencer Murch from CGR, along with (UBC alumnus) Maggie Schluter (U Calgary) presented this week’s ‘Technology Risk and Gambling’ seminar hosted by the University of Sydney, on ‘immersion and dissociative experiences’. Lots of great discussion, and we are big fans of this webinar series. You can watch the episode at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIFR5iYthGU

NEW PAPER in Addiction: eye tracking and gambling immersion Spencer’s paper using eye tracking during slot machine gambling, in order to better characterize immersive states, is published in the June issue of Addiction. This was a real team effort, involving several collaborators in the lab, with UBC Centre for Brain Health, and Miriam Spering’s lab in UBC Ophthalmology. Spencer did a great thread on […]

Welcome to incoming undergrads Ryan and Osa! Working from home under the COVID-19 lockdown has made it harder than usual to engage undergraduates in our research program, but we are delighted to take on two further students for projects this summer, in addition to our newly arrived USRA, Andy Kim. Ryan Picardo is a COGS 402 student who will be conducting a […]

Congrats Andy Kim, awarded an NSERC USRA scholarship We’re very happy to welcome Andy Kim to the Centre. Andy has been awarded a prestigious NSERC USRA summer scholarship. The arrangements for these awards have been rather complicated this year by the COVID-19 pandemic and campus closure, but for summer term at least, Andy will be working on some existing data looking at how […]

CGR reviews Uncut Gems In the latest instalment of our Gambling in the Movies series, we got together remotely on 3o March during the COVID-19 shutdown to watch the recent Netflix moving Uncut Gems, starring Adam Sandler. Spencer Murch made sense of our ramblings here. For the other movies in this series, see Gambling in the Movies.

Luke featured in CBC article on gambling and COVID Luke is featured in an article by CBC on how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting lottery sales and gambling more broadly, in the Maritimes.

NEW PAPER: Flow and Slot Machine Gambling We have a new paper in Frontiers in Psychology, led by Spencer Murch, looking at a cardiac psychophysiology measure called Pre-ejection Period (PEP) as a marker of sympathetic nervous system activity, during slot machine gambling. This paper features in a special section of Frontiers on High Performance Cognition: Information-processing in Complex Skills, Expert Performance, and […]

GREO snapshot on Juliette’s alcohol paper Gambling Research Exchange Ontario have featured our paper on the effects of alcohol on sequential decision-making in roulette in a Research Snapshot: https://www.greo.ca/Modules/EvidenceCentre/Details/the-effects-of-alcohol-on-gambling-biases-and-decisions Paper: Tobias-Webb J, Limbrick-Oldfield EH, Vearncombe S, Duka T, Clark L. The effects of alcohol on sequential decision-making biases during gambling. Psychopharmacology, 2020, 237, 395–407.

NEW PAPER: Dopamine and reward uncertainty in gambling addiction Martin Zack, Ross St George and I have a new article on the role of dopamine in signalling uncertain reward, as a central mechanism in gambling addiction, in a special issue on gambling in PNBP. 50 copies sharelink here https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1aMJr-Ly9HX4e Just because something activates dopamine (e.g. gambling, video games, pizza, hot bath), how would this […]

Globe and Mail article on BC problem gambling treatment program News story featuring comments from CGR’s Gabriel Brooks, about the announcement that the B.C. problem gambling treatment program are in the process of evaluating video gaming behaviours in their clients, including use of loot boxes, and their relationships with problem gambling. Gabe’s paper on loot boxes and problem gambling in Addictive Behaviors this year is […]

MEDIA COVERAGE gambling and alcohol study The Tobias-Webb et al study on alcohol, loss chasing, and the gambler’s fallacy picked up some news coverage: UBC Press Release CFAX radio interview, Adam Stirling’s morning show CTV news “Gamblers more likely to ‘chase losses’ after boozing, study finds” Casino.org “Tipsy Gamblers More Likely to Throw Good Money After Bad, Says University of British […]

GREO Research Snapshot on our Loot Boxes paper Thanks GREO for covering the Brooks & Clark study in Addictive Behaviors earlier this year on video game loot boxes & problem gambling, led by CGR grad student Gabriel Brooks. More to follow on this hot topic in 2020!

NEW PAPER in Psychopharmacology: Effects of alcohol on sequential decision making We have a new paper out looking at the effects of alcohol on gambling behaviour, from CGR alumnus Juliette Tobias Webb. Tobias-Webb J, Limbrick-Oldfield EH, Vearncombe S, Duka T, Clark L. The effects of alcohol on sequential decision-making biases during gambling. Psychopharmacology, 2020, doi: 10.1007/s00213-019-05376-z

NEW PAPER: update review on Loss Chasing We have a new review article out on Loss Chasing in a special issue of Current Opinion in Behavioural Sciences. In this paper we look to contrast two alternative ways of conceptualizing an important feature of disordered gambling: a neurocognitive approach that emphasizes impulsivity & compulsivity, and a behavioural economics approach, where the value function […]

Luke speaking at Lisbon Addictions on Regret in Gambling Disorder Luke is speaking this week at the major EU ‘Lisbon Addictions 2019’ conference on new CGR data looking at regret-based decision-making in people with Gambling Disorder, run in collaboration with Yin Wu at Shenzhen Uni, China. Luke Clark, Yin Wu, Caylee-Britt Goshko, Dawn Kennedy. ‘“I shouldn’t have taken that bet!”: Counterfactual thinking in gambling disorder’ […]

Gabe and Mario presenting at the NCRG annual conference in Las Vegas Gabriel Brooks and Mario Ferrari were presenting new data and representing CGR at the National Center for Responsible Gaming (NRC) annual conference in Las Vegas. Poster presentations: Ferrari, M. A. & Clark, L. What is a gambling habit? Behavioural changes with practice in slot machine gambling. . Brooks, G.A. & Clark, L. Measurement of gambling-related […]

Luke speaking at Pavlovian Society in Vancouver Luke is speaking in a UBC-themed symposium at the Pavlovian Society annual conference in Vancouver this week, alongside Catharine Winstanley, Stan Floresco and Jared Young (UCSD), hosted by Catherine Rankin, the current PavSoc president. He is speaking about ‘stopper devices’ in modern slot machine games, as well as Mario Ferrari’s new data on behavioural expression […]

Luke speaking at Canadian gambling regulators conference in Victoria Luke is giving an invited talk this week at the Canadian Gambling Regulators Association (CAGRA) conference in Victoria, B.C., in which he will present our recent data on slot machine immersion and online gambling from a perspective of gambling policy. Luke Clark ‘In the Zone? Psychological Markers of Disordered Slot Machine Gambling’. Canadian Gambling Regulators […]

GREO snapshot on Xiaolei’s data science & gambling review Gambling Research Exchange Ontario have covered our review article on the use of data science techniques in behavioural analysis of online gambling, in a Research Snapshot: https://www.greo.ca/Modules/EvidenceCentre/Details/the-use-of-data-science-in-gambling-research Paper: Deng X, Lesch T, Clark L. Applying data science to behavioural analysis of online gambling (review). Current Addiction Reports 2019, 6: 159-164.

Welcome to our new Research Assistants!!! Fall term is always a busy testing term in the Centre, and we have 5 (!!!) undergraduate research assistants who are joining the lab for projects this term! Nico Grossi (a former Psyc 335 student) will be following up Dawn Kennedy and Natalie Cringle’s recent projects on interoception in gambling. Subah Sehgal is a Psychology […]

Warm welcome to Fiza Arshad! Fiza Arshad joins us this year as an incoming graduate student in the Neuroscience program, supervised jointly between Dr. Winstanley and Luke Clark. Fiza will be investigating the neurochemistry of gambling behaviour as part of Dr. Winstanley CIHR grant, and she is also interested in the effects of sensory feedback on gambling in our casino […]

Eve speaking at ICBA 2019 in Japan Eve Limbrick-Oldfield is speaking this week at the International Conference on Behavioural Addictions on our data in siblings of people with gambling problems, run in collaboration with Henrietta Bowden Jones at the UK National Problem Gambling Clinic, and Anne Lingford Hughes at Imperial College London. Limbrick-Oldfield E: ‘Impulsivity as a marker of vulnerability to gambling […]

Spencer and Luke both speaking at the UNLV International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking The largest conference in the gambling field is taking place this week in Las Vegas, and Luke and Spencer are representing CGR in two symposium talks: Spencer Murch. ‘Zoned in or Zoned out? Investigating Slot Machine Immersion with Mobile Eye Tracking’ 16th International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking (Las Vegas, May 2019) Luke Clark, […]

Welcome to our new Research Assistants!! Summer term is going to be a busy period at CGR, as we welcome 5 new research assistants to a number of experiments that are getting underway. Samara Al-Omaishi (UBC Biology) and Balreet Dhatt (COGS 402) are working on the effects of sensory feedback on slot machine gambling. Ian Chen (COGS 402) is working on […]

Eve speaking about ‘pain of paying’ and cashless casinos at Discovery 2019 Eve Limbrick-Oldfield is talking this week at the Gambling Discovery 2019 conference in Toronto, organized by the Responsible Gambling Council, in a session on ‘No Cash Required: The Risks and Benefits of New Payment Technology in Casinos’. Fantastic conference program here.

NEW PAPER: Use of video-game ‘loot boxes’ and associations with problem gambling Congratulations to Gabriel Brooks, for his first CGR publication in Addictive Behaviors, looking at the links between video game loot box engagement in adult gamers, & problem gambling and gambling-related cognitive distortions. The link to the UBC press release is here, and Gabe’s interview on the Global BC breakfast news is here. The original paper […]

Zoha Janjua presenting at PURC Zoha is flying the CGR flag at the Psychology Undergraduate Research Conference this week, with a poster on her project with Mario Ferrari ‘Impulsivity and Behavioural Markers of Practice in Novice Slot Machine Players’.

Gabe Brooks’ loot boxes research in Vancouver Sun The Vancouver Sun ⁩ article on this week’s New Horizons gambling conference features CGR’s Gabriel Brooks’ new data on video game loot boxes & overlap with gambling problems, which he presented in the New Investigators symposium at the conference⁩.

CGR Funding Renewal Announcement! Major announcement by the Honourable David Eby at the New Horizons in Responsible Gambling conference this morning: the BC Government and British Columbia Lottery Corporation have renewed the funding for Centre for Gambling Research, for a second 5 year term worth $1.36m. We are grateful for this sustained commitment to research on gambling behaviour aiming […]

New Horizons 2019! CGR are looking forward to this year’s New Horizons in Responsible Gambling conference in Vancouver, and we’re presenting a lot of new data… Gabriel Brooks will be speaking in a session on New Investigators on ‘The gamblification of video games: An overview of ‘Loot Boxes’ and their links with disordered gambling’. Dr Mariya Cherkasova (UBC […]

INTERVIEW WealthSimple Luke is interviewed by the online finance magazine WealthSimple in a piece called ‘Why Our Brains Like Gambling’

NEW PAPER: Interoception and Heart Rate Variability in Gambling Disorder Congrats to Dawn Kennedy, who has led on this first CGR publication on people with gambling problems recruited and tested in Vancouver (n = 50, half have slot machines as their problematic form). Please take a look if you’re interested in the role of physiological arousal and excitement in gambling. Rather than measuring arousal (as […]

NEW PAPER: Testosterone fluctuations and slot machine gambling Congratulations to Mario Ferrari for his first CGR paper, based on his MA thesis, just published in the APA journal ‘Psychology of Addictive Behaviors’, on testosterone fluctuations and slot machine gambling: evidence for a ‘winner-loser’ effect? We were interested in the classic finding that outcomes of social contests affect testosterone levels (i.e. the winners show […]

GREO Research Snapshot on our alcohol study Gambling Research Exchange Ontario have featured our recent paper (Juliette Tobias-Webb et al, in Journal of Gambling Studies) looking at alcohol consumption and slot machine gambling in their ‘Research Snapshot‘ series.

NEW PAPER: Commentary on Waterloo LDW paper Spencer Murch and Luke Clark have a commentary piece on the excellent new paper in Addiction by Candice Graydon, Mike Dixon and colleagues at the University of Waterloo. Congrats and kudos to Graydon et al for designing an ultra-realistic ‘simulated’ slot machine to manipulate the rates of Losses Disguised as Wins in the lab. For […]

TALK at McMaster Grand Rounds Luke is speaking at the St Joseph’s Hospital & McMaster University Mental Health and Addictions Program (MHAP) Grand Rounds, on ‘Deconstructing the modern slot machine: game features and gambling addiction’, and looking forward to talking research with James Mackillop, Michael Amlung and Iris Balodis at the Peter Boris Centre for Addictions Research.

GREO Research Snapshot on multi-line games & immersion GREO have covered Spencer’s recent paper in Addictive Behaviors, looking at immersion and heart rate variability while playing a slot machine under different strategies of bet size and multi-line play. These knowledge translation synopses are written to update policy makers on recent research. Big thanks to David Baxter et al at GREO for their continued […]

NEW PAPER social decision-making in suicidal behaviour It’s not quite about gambling… but congratulations to CGR grad student Ke Zhang for her first paper, a collaboration with our colleagues Dr Kati Szanto and Dr Alex Dombrovski at University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre, looking at social decision making in older adults with suicidal behaviour, just out in Behavior Research & Therapy. We use […]

Interview: on BBC Radio5live Stephen Nolan show Stephen Nolan interviewed Luke in a detailed look at modern gambling machine design and personal risk factors for problem gambling. The BBC clip (Luke is on for about 25 mins from 1:05 to 1:30) will be available until 19 December.

NEW PAPER: Mariya Cherkasova, Sensory Feedback on Gambling Games Congratulations to Mariya for publishing her new research on the effects of audiovisual feedback in gambling games, in Journal of Neuroscience: Cherkasova M, Clark L, Barton J, Schulzer M, Shafiee N, Kingstone A, Stoessl AJ, Winstanley CA. Win-concurrent sensory cues can promote riskier choice. Journal of Neuroscience. We have a video explainer for the press […]

NEW PAPER CMHA BC ‘Visions’ special issue on gambling Luke has a paper in the new issue of Visions, the Journal of the BC Division of the Canadian Mental Health Association, in an important and well-timed Special Issue on ‘Problem Gambling and Video Gaming’ which also features articles from Andre Serzisko, Cam Adair and Angela Voght. Clark L. Betting on the Brain: Slot machines, […]

BIG Difference BC Luke and Eve were attendees at the BIG Difference BC conference in Victoria on behavioural insights, ‘nudging’, and public policy on 21 September. a BIG thanks to Kirstin Appelt, Dave Hardisty and Dale Griffin at the UBC Sauder School for organizing such a timely and important event.

NEW PAPER: Spencer Murch, Slot machine immersion and multi-line play Spencer Murch has a new paper out in the journal Addictive Behaviors, using the slot machines in the CGR Casino Lab, looking at how immersion ratings and heart rate variability vary when we manipulate two game strategies: multi-line vs single-line play and varying the bet size. Murch WS, Clark L. Effects of bet size and […]

GREO Research Snapshot on our Stoppers study Steph Chu’s recent paper in IGS was covered in a GREO Research Snapshot, which are synopses of recent articles intended for gambling policy makers

TALK on the opioid system in gambling disorder Luke is speaking at the British Association for Psychopharmacology annual conference in London this week on research lead by Eve Limbrick-Oldfield looking at the effects of naltrexone on brain responses in men with gambling disorder, recruited from the London National Problem Gambling Clinic. ‘Neuroimaging of the opiate system in gambling disorder’

NEW PAPER: Alcohol consumption and slot machine gambling New paper by Juliette Tobias-Webb in Journal of Gambling Studies looks at alcohol consumption after slot machine gambling: 30 mins of gambling (compared to a TV watching control group) showed increased ad libitum alcohol intake. Curiously, the effect did not transfer to a beer ‘taste test’ procedure in a second experiment in the paper. This […]

Luke speaking on CFAX about online gambling and self-exclusion Radio interview with Luke Clark on CFAX 1070 (Victoria) about the links between problem gambling and online gambling, and resources for gamblers seeking help.

Eve speaking at Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling annual conference Eve Limbrick-Oldfield is giving a keynote at the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling annual conference in Boston this week (Tuesday 20 April) on ‘The Gambling Brain’ including our latest data on brain imaging of the reward system in the siblings of people with Gambling Disorder.

New CIHR Project Grant with Winstanley Lab We were honoured to welcome MP Gordie Hogg to CGR this week to discuss our CIHR project grant awarded in January. The new project, led by Prof Catharine Winstanley and in collaboration with Mariya Cherkasova, Jon Stoessl, Vesna Sossi and Doris Doudet at the Djavid Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, will look at the effects […]

New Horizons conference 2018 Most of the Centre have been at the New Horizons in Responsible Gambling conference in Vancouver this past week. Spencer was presenting new data from his study looking at eye tracking as a measure of immersion in slot machine gambling, in a session also featuring Dr Stephane Bouchard (University of Quebec), who is the leading […]

New Horizons 2018 poster session… A lot of breaking data from CGR trainees at this year’s poster session… Gabe Brooks presenting his work on ‘Schizotypal personality: a risk factor for problematic gambling?’ Mario Ferrari was showing data on ‘Slot machine gambling and testosterone: evidence for a ‘Winner-Loser’ effect?’ […]

Brain Buzz podcast Listen to our very own Mario Ferrari and Gabe Brooks, PhD students at the Centre, talking about gambling research and how they became interested in psychology and graduate research, in a new UBC Psychology podcast called Brain Buzz, available here and itunes store. We were flattered to have the Centre featured in the first research episode.

Welcome Xiaolei! We’re very pleased to welcome Xiaolei Deng to the Centre, as a new PhD student. Xiaolei is on the Clinical Psychology graduate program, and has an unusual background (for a psychology graduate) in data science and machine learning. Xiaolei will be working on our BC Government-funded project looking at behavioural markers of risky gambling in […]

Luke Clark speaking on gambling at the HOpe Centre in North Van https://www.facebook.com/CRESTBD/videos/1607979362591694/

Stat News web article – NCRG conference The National Center for Responsible Gaming, which is funded by leading casinos, has organized the conference for the last 18 years. The industry’s role was hardly a secret. The company that operates the Venetian and the Palazzo sponsored a poster session. The company that runs Caesars Palace sponsored a refreshment break. And MGM sponsored a lunch. […]

Rick Mercer visits the Centre for Gambling Research, October 2017 Rick immerses himself in cutting edge research on the beautiful University of British Columbia campus in Vancouver. more

Richmond News – Seniors curb gambling addiction with Chinese drama A group of seniors perform drama in Richmond aimed at curbing addiction to gambling more

PC Gamer – Behind the addictive psychology and seductive art of loot boxes Why do loot boxes provide such a dark compulsion? Psychologists call the principle by which they work on the human mind ‘variable rate reinforcement.’ “The player is basically working for reward by making a series of responses, but the rewards are delivered unpredictably,” says Dr Luke Clark, director at the Center for Gambling Research at […]

National Council for Problem Gambling annual conference in Portland July 2017: the Centre learned a lot and also had a blast at the NCPG meeting in fabulous Portland. Luke gave a breakout session on our latest findings from our online gambling project using data from the BCLC’s PlayNow.com website (watch this space for our forthcoming report on these data!). Mario presented a poster on […]

Graduate fellowship news! We’re thrilled that 3 of the grad students at the Centre have been successful in the 2017 fellowships competition. Spencer Murch has been awarded a 3 year NSERC fellowship for the PhD program, to continue his work on the psychophysiology of slot machine immersion. Mario Ferrari has been awarded the Dr. William Arthur Paskins Memorial […]

Congratulations Spencer! Huge congrats to Spencer Murch, who has been awarded the Stanley Coren Prize from the UBC Department of Psychology for the best MA thesis! Spencer’s paper from this project ‘Measuring the slot machine zone with attentional dual tasks and respiratory sinus arrhythmia’ was also published in the May issue of the APA journal Psychology of […]

Luke speaking at UCSF Luke was speaking at the University of California – San Francisco in the Alcohol and Addiction Research Group seminar series, on ‘Gambling Disorder and the interplay between personal vulnerability and game features’. A massive thank you to Dr Andy Kayser for the invitation, and to Profs Howard Fields, Jennifer Mitchell, Woody Hopf, Josh Berke and […]

Welcome to Michele Carpentieri We’re very pleased to welcome Michele Carpentieri, a visiting PhD student from the University of Naples in Italy, to the Centre. Michele is interested in the effects of emotion on gambling cognitions in recreational and problem gamblers, and will be working from the Centre until October.

Luke Clark speaking at ICPS in Vienna Luke will be speaking this week at the International Convention of Psychological Science meeting in Vienna, in a session on Counterfactual Thinking. His talk will focus on ‘The role of counterfactual thinking in the response to gambling near-misses’ describing Yin Wu’s recent data, forthcoming in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.

New paper on slot machine immersion Spencer Murch’s latest data linking a psychological state of immersion in modern slot machines with risk of problem gambling was recently published online in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, and has received widespread media coverage over the last few weeks including Vancouver Sun and CBC .This is a timely and important paper for the Centre as it […]

Daily Mail – slot machines create trance-like state in gamblers Slot machines really do lull gambling addicts into a trance, researchers find; the ‘slot machine zone’ is the idea that problem gamblers prefer slot machines, this is because slot machines are fast and allow for a continuous style of play, people experienced with slot machines lose track of time and their surroundings, and the researcher say […]

CBC News – Redesign slot machines to be less attractive to problem gamblers Research out of UBC is pointing to strategies that could make playing slots less addictive — especially for problem gamblers — by flashing warning messages right on a game’s display screen. more

Vancouver Sun – Problem gamblers enter a trancelike ‘zone’ when they play slots, UBC study finds Gambling addicts enter a trancelike state while playing slot machines that appears to make the surrounding world and its cares melt away, according to new research from the University of British Columbia. more

Times Colonist: Problem gamblers enter trancelike ‘zone’ when they play slots Gambling addicts enter a trancelike state while playing slot machines that appears to make the surrounding world and its cares melt away, according to new research from the Spencer Murch more

CBC News – craving in problem gambling Eve Limbrick-Oldfield, from the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC, discusses their new paper on craving and the insula in problem gambling. Broadcast 3rd January 2017 more

Roundhouse Radio – UBC Study Finds Gambling And Drug Addiction Activate Brain In Similar Ways A UBC psychology study has identified similarities in the brain activity of drug addicts and problem gamblers that could help improve treatment for those that struggle with a gambling addiction. Researchers at the university’s Centre for Gambling Research say a part of the brain responsible for cravings, known as the insula and the prefrontal cortex, […]

Metro News – Gambling addiction triggers same part of brain as drug addiction: UBC study The finding could help rehab centres measure the effectiveness of treatments, something that is currently difficult. more

Vancouver Sun – Gambling, alcohol, drug addictions share brain circuitry Gambling addicts are being given a drug that curbs alcohol and heroin cravings in an experiment conducted by researchers at UBC’s Centre for Gambling Research. more

Pulse FM – Craving in gambling disorder Eve Limbrick-Oldfield from the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC discusses the teams new study on craving in problem gambling. Broadcast 4th January 2017 more

Roundhouse Radio – Craving in gambling disorder Broadcast on 6th January 2017, Eve Limbrick-Oldfield discusses new research on craving in gambling disorder more

CFAX 1070 – Eve Limbrick-Oldfield on craving in problem gamblers Dr. Limbrick-Oldfield talks about a recent study investigating craving responses in problem gamblers. more

Global News – Craving in problem gambling Luke Clark and Eve Limbrick-Oldfield talk about their new research study investigating the brain response to craving in problem gambling. more

Nautilus Magazine – How Designers Engineer Luck Into Video Games The responsibilities and challenges of programmed luck more

The Centre for Gambling Research at UBC discovers new treatments for problem gamblers After looking at images of slot machines and roulette, problem gamblers experience increased activity in the same part of the brain that lights up when drug addicts have cravings, according to a new study out of the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC. The findings, published today in Translational Psychiatry, suggest that this part of […]

UBC Emotion Research Group Luke is presenting today at the first workshop of the UBC Emotion Research Group, a collaborative venture between the Cognitive Science and Social Psychology areas of the Department, organized by Beck Todd and Jess Tracy’s labs. Luke will be speaking on ‘I got chills, they’re multiplying – somatic markers and bet size on a gambling […]

BC Gaming Industry Association We’d like to thank the BC Gaming Industry Association for their invitation to Dr. Clark to talk at their board meeting, on the progress and future directions of the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC. The discussion following the presentation honed in on a number of key points about the relationship between the science of […]

The Centre is UBC Psychology’s December Lab of the Month feature Understanding the psychology of gambling and improving evidence-based gambling policy are key drivers behind the research at the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC. The Centre explores the cognitive, behavioural, clinical and neuroscience aspects of gambling, Since it was established in 2014, the Centre – one of only a handful of gambling research hubs globally – […]

Poll: British Columbians see online betting as most dangerous form of gambling Online betting is more likely than any other type of gambling to be perceived as dangerous, according to a new poll — but a University of B.C. psychologist says the reality may be much more complicated than that. more

Research2Reality 2016 “What makes gambling addictive?” Website featuring innovative science in Canada Is slot machine gambling more about excitement or absorption? Professor Luke Clark looks at how game design influences gambling addiction. more

Eve talking at Society for Neuroeconomics in Berlin Eve Limbrick-Oldfield is giving a symposium talk at the Society for Neuroeconomics annual meeting in Berlin this week, on our recent neuroimaging work on the Gambler’s Fallacy: “Behavioural and neural correlates of the gambler’s fallacy in Gambling Disorder“. We’re particularly excited that this is the first time we’ve been invited to speak in a session […]

Global News – Is playing Pokemon GO a good or bad thing for our society? Is playing Pokemon GO a good or bad thing for our society? The popularity of Pokemon GO just keeps growing and so does the debate over whether it’s good or bad. Linda Aylesworth searched for an answer. more

CBC News – Organizers cancel Pokémon Go meet-up planned for Stanley Park Despite cancellation, many on Facebook say they plan to visit Stanley Park to chase Pokémon anyway. “As you need to go outside and move around to progress in the game, I hope this might work as a natural barrier to the game becoming too addictive,” said Luke Clark in the release. more

News1130 – Pokémon Go good for mental health: study “Players need to get outside in order to play the game. That’s really responsible for this amazing social contagion of the game, but it also seems to be impacting people’s mental health as well,” says Luke Clark, the director of the centre for gambling research at UBC. more

UBC Trek magazine (alumni magazine) – Pokemon Go The Surprising Psychological Benefits and Risks of Pokémon Go more

UBC press release on Pokemon Go The surprising psychological benefits— and risks— of Pokémon Go more

Seen our advert in the newspaper? Find out about our new slot machine study here We are looking for volunteers who play slot machines to take part in research study (2 hours, on UBC campus). Please visit the Participate tab or complete the online application form at www.survey.ubc.ca/s/PoP_CGR/

Congratulations Spencer and Steph for CGR’s first Masters theses! Spencer Murch and Steph Chu have both successfully defended their Masters theses over the past week, and Spencer and Steph were the two first graduate students working in the Centre for Gambling Research, starting in Sept 2014. Spencer’s thesis was entitled “Pay as you flow? Measuring the slot machine zone with attentional dual tasks”, and […]

“Why we love reading about lottery winners” CBC Why we love reading about lottery winners, even unhappy ones ‘It invites us to indulge in the fantasy of what it would be like to win,’ psychology prof more

UNLV International Conference on Gambling and Risk-Taking, June 2016 Eve, Spencer and Luke will all be in Las Vegas for the biggest of the international gambling conferences next week. Spencer Murch is giving a talk on “The Cost of Getting Lost: Measuring the Slot Machine ‘Zone’ with Attentional Dual Tasks” and Eve Limbrick-Oldfield is giving a talk on “Neural Substrates of Cue Reactivity and […]

Welcome Kent MacDonald, visiting summer student from UVic Kent is a final year BSc student at UVic in the combined program of Psychology and Computer Science. We’re putting his coding skills to good use improving the event marking from the slot machines in our Casino Lab, and Kent is also running a project looking at strategic decision-making in slot machine players.

Society of Biological Psychiatry annual meeting, May 2016 Luke was presenting functional imaging data in patients with Gambling Disorder at the SoBP meeting in Atlanta, from a project lead by Eve Limbrick-Oldfield: “Neural Substrates of Cue Reactivity and Craving in Gambling Disorder” by Limbrick-Oldfield E, Mick I, Cocks RE, McGonigle J, Sharman SP, Goldstone AP, Stokes P, Waldman A, Bowden-Jones H, Nutt D, […]

Tilman Lesch presenting at AGRI meeting Tilman is giving an invited talk at the Alberta Gambling Research Institute annual conference in Banff this week, in the Canadian Consortium on Gambling Research (CCGR) Pre-Conference Workshop on “Digital Engagement: How the Web Changes Recruitment, Data Collection, and User Feedback”. Tilman has been working on the big data from the PlayNow.com website in BC, […]

Voice of BC – Lotteries and Gaming BC Lottery Corporation (BCLC) CEO Jim Lightbody shares his insights on the state of BC’s gaming industry. He explains the various departments at BCLC and their role as a crown corporation. Money laundering, improving social licence for casinos and the new parq Vancouver Casino at BC Place are also discussed. more

New Horizons in Responsible Gambling conference The Centre had a strong presence at this year’s excellent New Horizons conference in Vancouver. Steph, Spencer and Luke all presented breaking data (see below) and Spencer scooped the poster prize for the conference with his poster ‘The cost of getting lost: Measuring the slot machine ‘zone’ with attentional tasks’. We also hosted the second […]

BBC Radio 4 – The Hindsight Bias The Human Zoo is a place to learn about the one subject that never fails to fascinate – ourselves. Are people led by the head or by the heart? How rational are we? And how do we perceive the world? There’s a curious blend of intriguing experiments to discover our biases and judgements, explorations and […]

Centre for Gambling Research New Horizon’s 2016 videos on gambling Videos featured in the New Horizons 2016 conference to show different gambling cognitive distortions and responsible gambling messaging. more

“Gambling: the impetus, evolving theories, characteristics, and treatments” – Online recorded interview with Abbey Strauss for the Florida Psychiatric Society Luke Clark, Ph.D., from the University of British Columbia, explains gambling: the impetus, evolving theories, characteristics, the drive, that it is an addiction, and the interventions and treatments. more

UBC Mood Disorders research rounds Luke is giving a talk today at the Djavid Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health on ‘Gambling addiction, decision making and mood disorders’ as part of the Mood Disorders Centre research rounds

Gambling in the Movies #6: The Gambler (1974) After a short hiatus, the CGR film series is back with an old-school classic. The Gambler has been recently remade featuring Mark Wahlberg, but we wanted to take on the 1974 original, written by James Toback (a problem gambler) and starring James Caan (who at the time was struggling with cocaine use). As a couple […]

Advisory Board and Anniversary Reception I’m pleased to report back that the inaugural meeting of the Advisory Board for the Centre on 4th September was a great success. We were joined by Prof. Jeff Derevensky (McGill), Dr Kahlil Philander (BCLC), Jennifer Miller (GPEB), Prof Geoff Hall (UBC Psychology) and Prof. Catharine Winstanley (UBC Psychology) stood in in place of […]

Svenska Spel workshop in Stockholm Luke is giving the plenary lecture this week at the Svenska Spel (state gambling provider for Sweden) annual research conference on ‘Gambling Disorder in DSM 5: The overlap between substance and non-substance addictions’ and is looking forward to catching up with the excellent research by Per Binde and others.

CGR Director Luke Clark receives top honour for his gambling disorder research from NCRG Congratulations to Dr. Luke Clark, recipient of the 2015 Scientific Achievement Award from the National Center for Responsible Gambling (NCRG). Dr. Clark is being recognized today for his contributions to the field of research on gambling disorder at the 16th annual NCRG Conference on Gambling and Addiction. “Dr. Clark has not only made a remarkable […]

Welcome Mario Ferrari and Gabriel Brooks! We’re very pleased to welcome to new grad students to the Centre this week – Mario is a new MA1 Clinical Psychology student, who has joined us from SFU, and Gabriel is a MA2 Clinical Psychology student who will be transitioning to our lab over the coming year. We’re looking forward to Mario and Gabriel […]

New undergraduate course Psyc 335 ‘Gambling and Decision-Making’ This week sees the start of an exciting new undergraduate course on ‘Gambling and Decision-Making’, with Luke Clark as the primary instructor, Steph Chu as the TA, and guest lectures from Dr Gerald Thomas (BC Ministry of Health) and Dr Terri-Lynn MacKay (Adjunct Prof in Psychology). Luke will be posting his reflections on the course […]

First year anniversary of the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC We’re looking forward to Friday, when the CGR will host the inaugural workshop of the Advisory Board for the Centre, as an opportunity to review our progress over the past 12 months and our future research directions. After the workshop, the Dean of Arts will host a reception to celebrate our anniversary and mark our […]

Farewell Juliette, Welcome Becci The CGR are sad that this is Juliette Tobias-Webb’s last week with us, as she prepares to return to Cambridge for the final year of her PhD. Many thanks for setting up the bar lab inside the casino lab! As Juliette departs, we’re delighted to welcome Becci Griggs, a visiting PhD student from the University […]

Breaking data at BAP 2015 in Bristol Luke is presenting new data from the CGR casino lab at the British Association for Psychopharmacology summer meeting in Bristol, UK, today, from Juliette Tobias-Webb’s experiment looking at ‘Effects of slot machine gambling on ad libitum alcohol consumption’. Also at the BAP meeting, there are several other presentations on gambling from Luke’s collaboration with Imperial […]

Gambling in the Movies #5: Two for the Money The latest film in our gambling series focusses on the world of sports betting, with the Pacino / McConaughey blockbuster “Two for the Money”. McConaughey is the lead as Brandon Lang, a football player who is forced to take a job at a call centre after a career-ending knee injury. He’s quickly given an assignment […]

CGR at APS 2015 in New York Juliette Tobias-Webb is presenting this week at the Association for Psychological Science, a poster on ‘ The influence of acute alcohol intoxication on the Gambler’s Fallacy’.

Gambling in the Movies #4: Owning Mahowny “I don’t have a gambling problem. I have a financial problem.” The fourth movie in our Gambling in the Movies series was Owning Mahowny. The film was released in 2003 and was one of the first lead roles for the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, playing Dan Mahowny. Set in the 1980s, the film recreates the […]

Western Canada Addiction Forum Luke is speaking at the Western Canada Addiction Forum annual conference, at the beautiful Sparkling Hill resort in the Okanagan valley, on ‘Gambling as a Process Addiction: Current Evidence and Treatment’. Long may this streak of nice conference locations continue.

International Congress on Addictive Disorders Luke is speaking at the ICAD ‘Focus on Behavioural Addictions’ meeting in Nantes, France this week, on ‘The neural basis of distorted thinking in gambling addiction’.

AGRI Poster Prize! Congratulations to Juliette for winning the poster prize at the AGRI conference for her presentation ‘The influence of acute alcohol intoxication on the gambler’s fallacy’ with Eve Limbrick-Oldfield and Luke Clark.

Sharman et al: new paper on near-misses We have a new paper out in International Gambling Studies from an experiment completed in Cambridge by Steve Sharman. Our past research shows that near-miss outcomes drive continued play in traditional slot machine-style games, but it is often noted that modern ‘multi-line’ slot machines are much more complex. In particular, the ‘loss disguised as a […]

CGR position on gambling research funding The issue of industry funding in gambling research, and the need for financial disclosures, has been raised in an important article by Prof Rebecca Cassidy (Goldsmiths, London) in International Gambling Studies, published in late 2014, which immediately prompted IGS to review its Disclosures policy. Luke Clark has published a commentary on the article (available for […]

CGR in Banff There’s a great program at the Alberta Gambling Research Institute annual meeting this weekend in Banff, including several presentations by members of the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC. Steph Chu is presenting a poster on ‘Use of the stopping device in modern multi-line slot machines’. Spencer Murch is presenting a poster on ‘Player immersion […]

Research Assistant post advertised The Centre for Gambling Research at UBC is currently advertising for a part-time Research Assistant to work on a project involving individuals with gambling problems. The job is posted on the UBC HR page http://www.hr.ubc.ca/careers-postings/staff.php with job ID 20246. A full job spec is available on the HR page, and please contact Luke Clark for further […]

New Horizons in Responsible Gambling 2015 The Centre for Gambling Research is enjoying the BCLC New Horizons conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre this week, and we’re presenting 4 posters at the Wednesday poster session: Spencer Murch: Measuring player immersion in a hybrid casino lab Stephanie Chu (with Mike Dixon, U Waterloo): Comparing the frustrating effects of near-misses in 3-reel and […]

Hindsight bias – BBC Radio 4 Human Zoo is an excellent series about psychology on BBC Radio 4, hosted by Michael Blastland and Timandra Harkness, and featuring resident expert Prof Nick Chater, one of the top Judgment and Decision Making researchers in the UK. This week’s program is a great primer on the phenomenon of hindsight bias, where our judgments on […]

Meet the experts Luke is featured this week in the ‘Meet the Experts’ series on the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation website talking about the neuroscience of gambling addiction, recorded at the Many Ways to Help Conference in Melbourne in October 2014. Follow them on twitter at @vicrgf

Arts on Air and Van Mag interviews You can listen to Luke discussing the new Centre for Gambling Research at UBC with UBC prof Ira Nadel on the Arts on Air CiTR program, originally aired on 3rd December and available online here There is also an interview with Luke discussing the Centre in the current issue of Vancouver Magazine, available here

The Psychology & Neuroscience of Gambling Addiction – Dr Luke Clark In this presentation, Dr. Luke Clark, Director of the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC, will consider the modern conceptualisation of pathological gambling (or Gambling Disorder) as a behavioural addiction. After briefly reviewing diagnosis and prevalence, the talk will focus on the distorted styles of thinking that occur during gambling, and their neurobiological basis in […]

Gambling in the Movies #3: Rounders In thinking about film choices for this series, we’ve been struck that there are many films set in or around gambling establishments, but many of these films are not really about gambling. The Hangover has been suggested a couple of times –a film that has a few interesting things to say about the psychology of […]

CGR in Victoria: Centre for Addictions Research of BC Luke will speaking in Victoria next week (Tuesday 16th December) on the Psychology and Neuroscience of Gambling Addiction at the Royal Jubilee Hospital, as part of the CARBC seminar series. http://www.carbc.ca/Portals/0/propertyagent/712/files/477/141216lukeclark.pdf

Arts on Air radio interview with Ira Nadel (3rd December 2014) Dr. Luke Clark talks about commercial gambling and cultural differences in gambling with Ira Nadel more

UK Gambling Addiction Awareness Week The Centre for Gambling Research at UBC is supporting the UK’s first national gambling awareness week, 1-7th December, organised by rethink gambling www.rethinkgambling.org. Luke Clark is speaking on the neuroscience of gambling addiction in a webinar jam, registration via http://webinarjam.net/webinar/go/13027/b6f5ac0b0f

UBC News – Centre for Gambling Research opens 2014 Luke Clark will head the new Centre for Gambling Research at UBC. Probing the psychology of gambling, helping problem gamblers and enhancing gaming policy are key goals for the new Centre for Gambling Research at UBC. more

Vancouver Sun – Gambling research centre opens at UBC (with video) Reducing the harm associated with problem gambling is one of the research areas the new Centre for Gambling Research at the University of B.C. will focus on, according to its director. Luke Clark said Wednesday that the centre is one of a handful of gambling research centres in the world with a “casino lab.” Clark […]

The Centre for Gambling Research at UBC officially opens (November 12, 2014) Probing the psychology of gambling, helping problem gamblers and enhancing gaming policy are key goals for the new Centre for Gambling Research at UBC, which opens today. The Centre – one of only a handful of such research hubs globally – is headed by leading gambling psychologist Luke Clark who joined UBC […]

New facial EMG papers Yin Wu, a final year phd student working with Luke Clark in Cambridge, has had two papers published this month back to back in the journal Psychophysiology. The first study is looking at facial muscle responses to near-misses. The classic gambling near-miss is strictly a ‘near win’, but using a wheel of fortune task, Yin’s […]

Losses Disguised as Wins The November issue of Addiction includes an important new paper by Mike Dixon and colleagues (U Waterloo) showing for the first time that problem gamblers may be more sensitive to ‘losses disguised as wins’ in multi-line slot machines. These are events where the win does not cover the initial wager, but the machine nevertheless responds […]

New paper on behavioural addictions Luke has a new review article in the Annals of the New York Academy of Science ‘Addiction Reviews’ issue. The basic premise is: if drugs of abuse are so powerful at hijacking the natural reward system, then how can behavioural addictions come to exist? The article focusses mainly on problem gambling, but also considers application […]

CGR down under Luke Clark is in Australia this week, speaking at the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation ‘Many ways to help’ conference in Melbourne, and a special workshop on ‘Gambling and Neuroscience’. Great program: http://www.responsiblegambling.vic.gov.au/for-professionals/conference/program

Engaging with BC mental health societies Luke Clark will present next week at the annual meetings of the Catholic Health Association of BC (18 Sept) and the Canadian Mental Health Association BC Division (19 Sept). He will speak on the psychology of gambling addiction and the research agenda for the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC.

Welcome to new CGR graduate students! We’re delighted to welcome Stephanie Chu and Spencer Murch as the first graduate students based at the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC. In October, Juliette Tobias-Webb will also be joining us for one year as a visiting student from the University of Cambridge.

BAP symposium: ‘Chickens and eggs: separating cause and effect in drug addiction’ Dr. Luke Clark is chairing a symposium ‘Chickens and eggs: separating cause and effect in drug addiction’ at the British Association for Psychopharmacology summer meeting in Cambridge, UK, 22nd July 2014. More details on the BAP summer meeting

International Society for Research on Impulsivity annual meeting: July 24 The International Society for Research on Impulsivity (InSRI) annual meeting will take place in Cambridge, UK on 24 July 2014 as a satellite to the BAP meeting, co-organised by Dr Luke Clark. More details on the annual meeting

UBC Summer Institute on Addiction session: ‘Gambling on the Brain’ Dr. Luke Clark, inaugural Director of the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC, joined Dr. Perry Kendall, British Columbia Provincial Health Officer, for an interactive session focusing on how neuroscience research is informing addiction practice and policy and what supports are available for individuals and families. Speakers include: Luke Clark, Director, Centre for Gambling Research […]

A Conversation with Luke Clark Dr. Luke Clark, a global expert in the field of gambling research, joined the Department of Psychology as the inaugural director of the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC. Dr. Clark, who led the UK’s largest study of pathological gamblers, will lead the academic and operational activities of the Centre beginning July 1, 2014. We […]

BBC – Can we become addicted to technology? Through smartphones, tablets, laptops and their apps, technology now influences almost every aspect of our lives, and many fear that this digital way of life can be dangerously addictive. more

Daily Mail – Scientists pinpoint part of the brain linked to addiction Scientists think that when this brain area is overactive, the heart rules our head and we can’t help but chase our losses. The Cambridge University researchers said: ‘Future treatments for gambling addiction could seek to reduce this hyperactivity, either by drugs or psychological techniques.’ more

Independent – The gambler’s fallacy explained? Misguided belief in the big win just around the corner could be down to brain activity A study has identified a region of the brain that appears to play a critical role in supporting the distorted thinking which makes people more likely to gamble because they mistakenly think they have a better-than-average chance of winning. more

University of Cambridge News – New study reveals scale of problem gambling among homeless population Homeless people are ten times more likely to be problem gamblers than the UK population as a whole, researchers at Cambridge have found. more

UBC News – Gambling research pioneer to lead new centre at UBC Luke Clark will lead the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC. Photo: UBC Psychology. Leading gambling psychologist Luke Clark will join the University of British Columbia’s Dept. of Psychology as inaugural director of the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC to advance research and understanding of problem gambling behaviours. Clark, who led the U.K.’s largest […]

Globe and Mail – A researcher tries to make sense of problem gambling Luke Clark is a faculty member from the University of Cambridge’s psychology department was named the first director of the new Centre for Gambling Research at the University of British Columbia. more

Vancouver Sun – UBC hires British expert for Centre for Gambling Research VANCOUVER – Luke Clark was named Tuesday as the inaugural director of the Centre for Gambling Research at the University of B.C. The centre was established last February with a $2-million grant from the B.C. Lottery Corp. and the provincial government. Considered a global expert in the psychology of gambling, Clark has studied the distorted […]