How does the brain of a gaming addict react to game words?
Gamers with Internet Gaming Disorder show higher activation in brain areas linked to cognitive control and vision when seeing gaming terms, even though their button-press response times do not significantly differ from non-gamers.
Source
Brain Activity toward Gaming-Related Cues in Internet Gaming Disorder during an Addiction Stroop Task
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How does the brain of a gaming addict react to game words?
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19 IGD subjects
Participants were right-handed males and had no difficulty in naming color (19 IGD subjects, 21 healthy controls (HCs)).
30 internet gaming-related words
Two kinds of words (see in the supplementary document), including 30 internet gaming-related and 30 matched control words (matched in terms of semantic properties that affect reading speed, including word length, number of syllables per word), were presented randomly in red, green and yellow.
What they did
Researchers recruited 19 male university students with Internet Gaming Disorder and 21 male healthy controls to perform an addiction Stroop task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The participants viewed 30 gaming-related words and 30 neutral words displayed in red, yellow, or green, and quickly identified the font color while ignoring the word's meaning. The researchers measured response times, accuracy, and brain activity during 120 randomized trials.
What they found
While there were no statistically significant differences in reaction times or accuracy between the groups, the imaging data showed that gaming addicts had significantly greater brain activation in the inferior parietal lobule, middle occipital gyrus, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex when viewing game-related words. Furthermore, within the gaming group, a positive correlation of 0.468 was found between behavioral attention bias and activity in the middle occipital gyrus.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This study only included male participants who played a specific game, Dota, meaning the results may not apply to females or players of other game genres. Additionally, the behavioral results for reaction times did not show a statistically significant difference between the groups, making it difficult to verify if a behavioral attentional bias actually occurred. Lastly, because the fMRI data is correlational, the study cannot prove that internet gaming disorder caused these brain activity patterns or if pre-existing differences made these individuals more prone to gaming.
Key terms
- Internet Gaming Disorder
- A condition characterized by repetitive, excessive, and compulsive engagement with online video games that leads to significant impairment or distress.
- Attentional Bias
- The tendency of an individual's attention to be preferentially drawn to highly salient or personally relevant stimuli, such as cues related to an addiction.
- Addiction Stroop Task
- A cognitive test where participants name the color of words related to an addiction, with slower response times indicating that the word's meaning interfered with attention.
- Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex
- A brain region located in the frontal lobe that is heavily involved in executive functions, cognitive control, and managing attention.
- Inferior Parietal Lobule
- A brain region associated with maintaining attention on specific tasks and resolving cognitive conflict.
- Middle Occipital Gyrus
- A region in the visual cortex that is primarily involved in visual attention, processing, and word recognition.
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How is Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) currently conceptualized in relation to substance use disorders in the scientific literature?
Common questions
Why did the researchers only study male participants?
The researchers focused entirely on males because previous epidemiological data indicates that Internet Gaming Disorder is significantly more prevalent in men than in women.
Why did both groups perform similarly in their response times?
The researchers suggest that frequent video game play can improve visual attention and motor skills, which may have enabled the gaming group to compensate and speed up their responses, masking any observable behavioral delay.
What specific game did the participants play?
All participants with Internet Gaming Disorder in this study specifically reported playing 'Defense of the Ancients' (Dota), a highly popular real-time strategy online game.
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