The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is the gold standard for examining human decision-making processes and gambling behaviour under different clinical conditions, although there has been some criticism of it in recent years. A number of animal tests still aspire to be analogous to IGT, with 2009 seeing the first-time development of the rodent-designed Rat Gambling Task (rGT), where many remarkable results have been found from pharmacological manipulations and microsurgical lesions. The Primate Gambling Task has been introduced for primates, investigating the effects of changes in various circumstances and also external or internal factors on test performance. These experiments are a step toward producing an animal model of pathological gambling where, unlike substance addictions, similar simulations are not yet available.

Key words: animal models of addiction – decision-making – pathological gambling – Iowa Gambling Task – Primate Gambling Task – Rat Gambling Task