Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

Sec. Motivation and Reward

Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2025.1634058

This article is part of the Research TopicExploring the framing effect on maladaptive behaviors: Neural mechanisms and applicationsView all articles

Self-Referencing Versus Other-Referencing in Gambling: Effects of vmPFC Stimulation on Decision-making and Feedback Processing

Provisionally accepted
Thomas  KrokerThomas Kroker1*Maimu  Alissa RehbeinMaimu Alissa Rehbein2Mirek  WyczesanyMirek Wyczesany3Selina  Teresa HansenSelina Teresa Hansen4Riccardo  BiancoRiccardo Bianco1Alejandro  Espino-PayaAlejandro Espino-Paya1Markus  JunghoeferMarkus Junghoefer1
  • 1University of Münster, Münster, Germany
  • 2Universitat Osnabruck, Osnabrck, Germany
  • 3Uniwersytet Jagiellonski w Krakowie, Krakw, Poland
  • 4Universitatsklinikum Munster, Mnster, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

A key skill useful in everyday life is learning from our past choices to overcome cognitive biases and cope with our environment. In this regard, we are often responsible not only for ourselves but also for others. As our previous results showed that after excitatory stimulation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) people improved risk weighing and reduced their cognitive biases via improved affective learning, here we examined whether the above results differ when participants are playing for themselves versus for someone else. Therefore, we added this experimental manipulation to our previously well-validated gambling paradigm. We found that participants showed improved learning after excitatory stimulation when playing for themselves but not when playing for someone else. At the neural level, we observed interaction effects involving the stimulation (inhibitory vs. excitatory), the frame (gain vs. loss) and the recipient (self vs. other) in prefrontal, temporal and parietal areas during the decision-making and feedback phase. Our results suggest that excitatory vmPFC-tDCS can facilitate gambling and enhance the neural processing of gambling-related stimuli when playing for oneself.

Keywords: tDCS, vmPFC, MEG, affective learning, Gambling

Received: 23 May 2025; Accepted: 08 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Kroker, Rehbein, Wyczesany, Hansen, Bianco, Espino-Paya and Junghoefer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Thomas Kroker, University of Münster, Münster, Germany

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.