Brain Damage

Are winning poker players brain damaged?

From Cheap Talk

Each brain-damaged person got a wad of play money, and instructions to gamble on 20 rounds of coin tossing (heads-you-win/tails-you-lose, with some added twists). Other people who had no such brain lesions got the same money and the same gambling instructions.

The brain-damaged gamblers pretty consistently ended up with more money than their healthier-brained competitors. The researchers speculate that when “normal” gamblers encounter a run of unhappy coin-toss results, they get discouraged and become cautious – perhaps too cautious. Not so the people with brain-lesion-induced emotional disfunction. Encountering a run of bad luck, they plough on, undaunted. And then enjoy a relatively handsome payoff. At least sometimes.