In their pursuit of maximum reward, people suffering from gambling disorder rely less on exploring new but potentially better strategies, and more on proven courses of action that have already led to success in the past. The neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain may play an important role in this, a study in biological psychology conducted at the University of Cologne’s Faculty of Human Sciences by Professor Dr. Jan Peters und Dr. Antonius Wiehler suspects. The article “Attenuated directed exploration during reinforcement learning in gambling disorder’ has appeared in the latest edition of the Journal of Neuroscience, published by the Society for Neuroscience.