Sharif Digital Repository

The virtual reality (VR) applications in entertainment and tourism industry have become growingly intense among generation Z. Interestingly, some pilot research on tourism studied concluded the positive impact of its flow experience on adoption of VR tourism, which is also driving the risk of immersive addictive. In the context of tourism and information and communication technology (ICT)-based innovation, there is a lack of immersive addictive behavior (IAB)-related literature. In addition, during the currently ongoing pandemic crisis, VR technology has gained particular importance in the tourism industry among generation Z. The present venture underlines the mechanism of IAB, investigates... 

Clinical and experimental observations show individual differences in the development of addiction. Increasing evidence supports the hypothesis that dopamine receptor availability in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) predisposes drug reinforcement. Here, modeling striatal-midbrain dopaminergic circuit, we propose a reinforcement learning model for addiction based on the actor-critic model of striatum. Modeling dopamine receptors in the NAc as modulators of learning rate for appetitive-but not aversive-stimuli in the critic-but not the actor-we define vulnerability to addiction as a relatively lower learning rate for the appetitive stimuli, compared to aversive stimuli, in the critic. We...