An FMRI Stroop task study of ventromedial prefrontal cortical function in pathological gamblers.

OBJECTIVE Function of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex has been implicated in impulse control. The authors used the Stroop paradigm to test attention and response inhibition during the presentation of congruent and incongruent stimuli in male pathological gamblers and a group of comparison subjects. METHOD Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine ventromedial prefrontal cortex function during Stroop performance. RESULTS In response to infrequent incongruent stimuli, pathological gamblers demonstrated decreased activity in the left ventromedial prefrontal cortex relative to the comparison subjects. Both groups demonstrated similar activity changes in multiple brain regions, including activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate and dorsolateral frontal cortex. CONCLUSIONS Pathological gamblers share many neural correlates of Stroop task performance with healthy subjects but differ in a brain region previously implicated in disorders characterized by poor impulse control.