Amplitude of Low Frequency Fluctuation Abnormalities in Adolescents with Online Gaming Addiction

Abstract

The majority of previous neuroimaging studies have demonstrated both structural and task-related functional abnormalities in adolescents with online gaming addiction (OGA). However, few functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies focused on the regional intensity of spontaneous fluctuations in blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) during the resting state and fewer studies investigated the relationship between the abnormal resting-state properties and the impaired cognitive control ability. In the present study, we employed the amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) method to explore the local features of spontaneous brain activity in adolescents with OGA and healthy controls during resting-state. Eighteen adolescents with OGA and 18 age-, education- and gender-matched healthy volunteers participated in this study. Compared with healthy controls, adolescents with OGA showed a significant increase in ALFF values in the left medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the left precuneus, the left supplementary motor area (SMA), the right parahippocampal gyrus (PHG) and the bilateral middle cingulate cortex (MCC). The abnormalities of these regions were also detected in previous addiction studies. More importantly, we found that ALFF values of the left medial OFC and left precuneus were positively correlated with the duration of OGA in adolescents with OGA. The ALFF values of the left medial OFC were also correlated with the color-word Stroop test performance. Our results suggested that the abnormal spontaneous neuronal activity of these regions may be implicated in the underlying pathophysiology of OGA.

Reduced fiber integrity and cognitive control in adolescents with internet gaming disorder

“…It has drawn scientific attention from academia around the world (Christakis, 2010;Durkee et al, 2012). Numerous studies had detected the possible neural mechanisms of the IGD and suggested that it may be related to the impaired cognitive control (Dong et al, 2011a(Dong et al, , 2011b(Dong et al, , 2013Yuan et al, 2013aYuan et al, , 2013b. More and more findings suggested that cognitive control ability is not only associated with the isolated operations of single brain areas but also is related with the connections within brain core neurocognitive networks (Bressler and Menon, 2010;Menon and Uddin, 2010;Menon, 2011;Uddin et al, 2011).…”

“…Although the accurate contribution of these brain networks to cognitive control remains controversial, one theory is that the salience network (SN) -which includes the ACC and insula -regulates dynamic changes in other networks to modulate cognitive function (Bonnelle et al, 2012;Uddin et al, 2011). Previous studies had connected the regional brain abnormalities and impaired cognitive control in IGD, such as the correlation between the abnormal OFC and response errors during incongruent condition measured by Stroop task (Yuan et al, 2013a(Yuan et al, , 2013b. Values are expressed as mean7standard deviation (SD).…”

“…The color-word Stroop task design was implemented by using E-prime 2.0 software (http://www.pstnet.com/eprime.cfm), which has been used in previous studies (Xu et al, 2006;Yuan et al, 2013aYuan et al, , 2013b. This task employed a block design with three conditions, i.e.…”

“…Moreover, regardless of whether IGD is conceptualized as a behavioral addiction or an impulse-control disorder, it is speculated to be associated with impaired cognitive control . Previous IGD studies have revealed cognitive impairments among online gamers by using cognitive control tasks, such as color-word Stroop task, GO/NOGO task and gambling task (Dong et al, 2010, Yuan et al, 2013a, 2013b. However, the majority of studies only focus on the regional brain abnormalities and impaired cognitive control in IGD, such as the correlation between the abnormal OFC and response errors during incongruent condition measured by Stroop task (Yuan et al, 2013a(Yuan et al, , 2013b, few studies mentioned that whether the cognitive control behavioral deficits can be regulated by connectivity of brain network.…”

“…Then, we assessed impaired cognitive control b r a i n r e s e a r c h 1 5 8 6 ( 2 0 1 4 ) 1 0 9 -1 1 7 ability in IGD adolescents using a color-word Stroop task (Dong et al, 2011bYuan et al, 2013aYuan et al, , 2013b. Finally, the correlation of neuroimaging findings and cognitive behavior performance was evaluated in IGD adolescents.…”