Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Center, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne and Melbourne Health, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
PLoS One. 2013;8(2):e57831. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0057831. Epub 2013 Feb 25.
Internet addiction has become increasingly recognized as a mental disorder, though its neurobiological basis is unknown. This study used functional neuroimaging to investigate whole-brain functional connectivity in adolescents diagnosed with internet addiction. Based on neurobiological changes seen in other addiction related disorders, it was predicted that connectivity disruptions in adolescents with internet addiction would be most prominent in cortico-striatal circuitry.
Participants were 12 adolescents diagnosed with internet addiction and 11 healthy comparison subjects. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance images were acquired, and group differences in brain functional connectivity were analyzed using the network-based statistic. We also analyzed network topology, testing for between-group differences in key graph-based network measures.
Adolescents with internet addiction showed reduced functional connectivity spanning a distributed network. The majority of impaired connections involved cortico-subcortical circuits (∼24% with prefrontal and ∼27% with parietal cortex). Bilateral putamen was the most extensively involved subcortical brain region. No between-group difference was observed in network topological measures, including the clustering coefficient, characteristic path length, or the small-worldness ratio.
Internet addiction is associated with a widespread and significant decrease of functional connectivity in cortico-striatal circuits, in the absence of global changes in brain functional network topology.
尽管互联网成瘾的神经生物学基础尚不清楚，但它已被越来越多地视为一种精神障碍。本研究使用功能神经影像学来研究被诊断患有互联网成瘾的青少年的全脑功能连接。基于其他与成瘾相关疾病的神经生物学变化，研究人员预测，互联网成瘾青少年的连接中断在皮质纹状体回路中最为明显。
参与者包括 12 名被诊断患有互联网成瘾的青少年和 11 名健康对照者。采集静息状态功能磁共振图像，并使用基于网络的统计方法分析大脑功能连接的组间差异。我们还分析了网络拓扑结构，测试了基于图的关键网络测量的组间差异。
互联网成瘾的青少年表现出跨越分布式网络的功能连接减少。大多数受损的连接涉及皮质下回路（约 24%与前额叶有关，约 27%与顶叶有关）。双侧壳核是最广泛涉及的皮质下脑区。在网络拓扑度量方面，包括聚类系数、特征路径长度或小世界比率，均未观察到组间差异。
互联网成瘾与皮质纹状体回路中广泛而显著的功能连接减少有关，而大脑功能网络拓扑结构没有全局变化。
