Action real-time strategy gaming (ARSG) is a cognitively demanding task which requires attention, sensorimotor skills, team cooperation, and strategy-making abilities. A recent study found that ARSG experts had superior visual selective attention (VSA) for detecting the location of a moving object that could appear in one of 24 different peripheral locations (Qiu et al., 2018), suggesting that ARSG experience is related to improvements in the spatial component of VSA. However, the influence of ARSG experience on the temporal component of VSA-the detection of an item among a sequence of items presented consecutively and quickly at a single location-still remains understudied. Using behavioral and electrophysiological measures, this study examined whether ARSG experts had superior temporal VSA performance compared to non-experts in an attentional blink (AB) task, which is typically used to examine temporal VSA. The results showed that the experts outperformed the non-experts in their detection rates of targets. Furthermore, compared to the non-experts, the experts had faster information processing as indicated by earlier P3 peak latencies in an AB period, more attentional resources distributed to targets as indicated by stronger P3 amplitudes, and a more flexible deployment of attentional resources. These findings suggest that experts were less prone to the AB effect. Thus, long-term ARSG experience is related to improvements in temporal VSA. The current findings support the benefit of video gaming experience on the development of VSA.

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This study examines whether a decrease in brain development is observable after players have reduced their video gaming time over a period of 1 year. Both video gaming experts and non-experts were recruited, whose resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) data were collected at the beginning and the end of the study. Immediately after the first scan, the participants were instructed to spend no more than 3 h on video gaming weekly for 1 year. The results showed decreased self-reported video gaming skills and decreased amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) in the experts at the end of the study, demonstrating that a reduction in video gaming time over a period of 1 year produced a decrease in brain development. The non-experts served as a control group and had no significant changes. The findings support the adaptive effect of video gaming experience on brain and cognitive development.

Reward processing alterations have been suggested as candidate mechanism underlying anhedonia and apathy in depression. Neuroimaging studies have documented that neurofunctional alterations in mesocorticolimbic circuits may neurally mediate reward processing deficits in depression. However, common and distinct neurofunctional alterations during motivational and hedonic evaluation of monetary (extrinsic) and natural (intrinsic) rewards in depression have not been systematically examined. Here we capitalized on a series of pre-registered neuroimaging meta-analyses to (1) establish general reward-related neural alterations in depression, (2) determine common and distinct alterations during anticipation of monetary rewards, receipt of monetary rewards, and receipt of natural rewards, and, (3) characterize the differences on the behavioral, network and molecular level. The coordinate-based meta-analysis included a total of 633 depressed patients and 644 healthy controls and revealed generally decreased subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC) and striatal reactivity towards rewards in depression. Subsequent quantitative comparison analysis indicated that monetary rewards led to decreased hedonic reactivity in the right ventral caudate while natural rewards led to decreased reactivity in the bilateral putamen. These regions exhibited distinguishable profiles on the behavioral, network and receptor level. Further analyses demonstrated that the right thalamus and left putamen showed decreased activation during the anticipation of monetary reward. The present results indicate that distinguishable neurofunctional alterations may neurally mediate reward-processing alterations in depression in particular with respect to monetary and natural rewards. Given that natural rewards prevail in everyday life, our findings suggest that reward-type specific interventions are warranted and challenge the generalizability of experimental tasks employing monetary incentives to capture reward dysregulations in everyday life.

Disgust represents a multifaceted defensive-avoidance response. On the behavioral level, the response includes withdrawal and a disgust-specific facial expression. While both serve the avoidance of pathogens the latter additionally transmits social-communicative information. Given that common and distinct brain representation of the primary defensive-avoidance response (core disgust) and encoding of the social-communicative signal (social disgust) remain debated we employed neuroimaging meta-analyses to (1) determine brain systems generally engaged in disgust processing, and (2) segregate common and distinct brain systems for core and social disgust. Disgust processing, in general, engaged a bilateral network encompassing the insula, amygdala, occipital and prefrontal regions. Core disgust evoked stronger reactivity in left-lateralized threat detection and defensive response network including amygdala, occipital and frontal regions while social disgust engaged a right-lateralized superior temporal-frontal network engaged in social cognition. Anterior insula, inferior frontal and fusiform regions were commonly engaged during core and social disgust suggesting a common neural basis. We demonstrate a common and separable neural basis of primary disgust responses and encoding of associated social-communicative signals.

Background Brain structural alterations of the striatum have been frequently observed in Internet gaming disorder (IGD); however, the replicability of the results and the associations with social-affective dysregulations such as social anxiety remain to be determined. Methods The present study combined a dimensional neuroimaging approach with both voxel-wise and data-driven multivariate approaches to (1) replicate our previous results on a negative association between IGD symptom load (assessed by Internet Gaming Disorder Scale-Short-Form, IGDS9-SF) and striatal volume, (2) extend these findings to female individuals, and, (3) employ multivariate and mediation models to determine common brain structural representations of IGD and social anxiety (assessed by Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, LSAS). Results In line with the original study the voxel-wise analyses revealed a negative association between IGD and volumes of the bilateral caudate. Going beyond the earlier study investigating only male participants, the present study demonstrates that the association in the right caudate was comparable in both, the male and the female subsample. Further examination using the multivariate approach revealed regionally different associations between IGD and social anxiety with striatal density representations in the caudate and nucleus accumbens. Higher levels of IGD were associated with higher social anxiety and the association was critically mediated by the multivariate neurostructural density variations of the striatum. Conclusions Altered striatal volumes may represent a replicable and generalizable marker of IGD symptoms. However, exploratory multivariate analyses revealed more complex and regional specific associations between striatal density and IGD as well as social anxiety symptoms. Variations in both tendencies may share common structural brain representations, which mediate the association between increased IGD and social anxiety.

Fear of missing out (FOMO) promotes the desire or urge to stay continuously connected with a social reference group and updated on their activities, which may result in escalating and potentially addictive smartphone and social media use. The present study aimed to determine whether the neurobiological basis of FOMO encompasses core regions of the reward or social brain, and the associations with the level of problematic smartphone or social media use. We capitalized on a dimensional neuroimaging approach to examine cortical thickness and subcortical volume associations in a comparably large sample of healthy young individuals (n = 167). Meta-analytic network and behavioral decoding were employed to further characterize the identified regions. Higher levels of FOMO associated with lower cortical thickness in the precuneus. In contrast, no associations between FOMO and variations in striatal morphology were observed. Meta-analysis decoding revealed that the identified precuneus region exhibited a strong functional interaction with the default mode network (DMN) engaged in social cognitive and self-referential domains. Together the present findings suggest that individual variations in FOMO are associated with the brain structural architecture of the right precuneus, a core hub within a large-scale functional network resembling the DMN involved in social and self-referential processes. FOMO may promote escalating social media and smartphone use via social and self-referential processes rather than reward-related processes per se.

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