Attention
How does the brain of a gaming addict react to game words?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
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.
Key findings
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.
Methodology
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.
Limitations
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.
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