| Objective:During the past twenty years,the prevalence of online games has brought many negative impacts,resulting in individuals repeatedly addicting into online games and leading to inefficient academic performance,inefficient work and tense interpersonal relationship.This phenomenon is referred to Internet game disorder(IGD),and it also causes a growing number of psychological researchers and educators to investigate the neural mechanism of IGD.Craving is one of the primary behavioral components of addiction,and cue-induced craving is an especially powerful form of this construct.The cue-reactivity has been suggested to be the most reliable and ecologically valid paradigm to evaluate craving and it has been utilized to evaluate craving for substance dependence,pathological gambling and food addiction.Demographic results show that the number of male IGD is much higher than that of female IGD.IGD is characterized by gender difference.However,the neurobiological mechanism underlying the gender differences that leads to the desire for Internet games is yet unclear.The purpose of our study is through the creation of deprivation of Internet game withdrawal situation,showing the participants game picture clues,and the use of brain MRI scans were recorded,in order to explore the activation of male and female IGD induced craving and related brain regions.Afterwards,combined with the structural image data,we aimed to explore the neural basis of gender difference in individuals with IGD,which provides a more targeted pertinent theoretical basis for the clinical intervention therapy and early prevention of IGD.Methods:In the first study,we created a deprived-online game situation and showed participants game related picture.Meanwhile,the brain activity reaction of the subjects was recorded by MRI.We let the participants terminate their operation after real time for 15 minutes "League of Legends"(LOL),and let them stay in the 3-minute abstinence state.then the participants were required to perform visual cues-stimuli picture judgment reaction task for 60 trials;Then,we adopted statistical analysis to analyze behavior results and use Analysis of Variance(ANOVA)to analyze functional brain imaging data.The second study is to let the participants lie in the MRI scanner,close their eyes,keep awake and head fixed for 8 minutes.Afterwards,we used Freesurfer software to extract and analyze the cortical thickness and gray matter volume to investigate gender differences in IGD and analyze the interaction effect between gender and group,the main effect of gender and the main effect of group.Results:(1)Compared with gender-matched recreational gaming users(RGU),game pictures were more likely to induce activation of frontal cortex,thalamus,anterior central gyrus,inferior parietal lobule and superior temporal gyrus in male IGD than neutral pictures in female IGD.(2)Compared with gender-matched RGU,male IGD increased cerebral cortex thickness significantly mainly concentrated in the superior parietal lobule,postcentral gyrus,inferior parietal lobe,insula and anterior cingulate brain regions while female IGD not;Compared with gender-matched RGU,male IGD reduced cerebral cortex thickness mainly located in the lingual gyrus,precuneus,middle frontal gyrus and orbital frontal gyrus while female IGD not.(3)Compared with gender-matched RGU,male IGD had larger insula and precuneus which is associated with the reward system while female IGD had smaller insula and precuneus.Compared with gender-matched RGU,male IGD showed abnormal gray matter volume in executive control function related brain region.Conclusions:(1)Compared with the gender-matched RGU,the game pictures can induce the thirst for the male IGD more than the neutral picture in female IGD.Especially in the deprivation of Internet gaming,the desire for online games is more intense.(2)The neuroanatomical structure of the desire for visual cues may be mainly located in the thalamus,middle frontal gyrus,the anterior central gyrus,the superior temporal gyrus and the inferior parietal lobule.The desire for Internet games may involve multiple brain areas,including reward systems and executive control functions.(3)The structural imaging data demonstrates the results that male IGD showed permanent change compared to female IGD in the reward system and executive control function related brain regions,which explain the physiological causes of male IGD more than female IGD is widespread. |
