School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Denki University, Saitama, Japan.
Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.
PLoS One. 2020 May 29;15(5):e0233780. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0233780. eCollection 2020.
Gaming disorder, which is characterized by multiple cognitive and behavioral symptoms, often has comorbid psychiatric conditions such as depression and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Neurobiological effects of the comorbid disorders so far reported are not converging, exhibiting positive and negative alterations of the connectivity in brain networks. In this study, we conducted resting-state functional magnetic-resonance imaging and whole brain functional connectivity analyses for young participants consisting of 40 patients diagnosed with the gaming disorder, with and without comorbid conditions, and 29 healthy controls. Compared to healthy controls, the gaming disorder-alone patients had partially diminished connectivities in the reward system and executive control network, within which there existed central nodes that served as a hub of diminished connections. In the gaming disorder patients who had comorbidity of autism spectrum disorder, the diminished connections were enlarged, with alteration of the hub nodes, to the entire brain areas involved in the reward system including cortical, subcortical and limbic areas that are crucial for reward processing, and to the whole cortical areas composing the executive control network. These observations suggest that the neurodevelopmental condition coexisting with the gaming disorder induced substantial impairment of the neural organizations associated with executive/cognitive and emotional functions, which are plausibly causal to the behavioral addiction, by rearranging and diminishing functional connectivities in the network.
游戏障碍的特征是多种认知和行为症状，常伴有抑郁和注意缺陷多动障碍等精神共病。目前报道的共病障碍的神经生物学效应并不一致，表现为大脑网络连接的正性和负性改变。在这项研究中，我们对包括 40 名被诊断为游戏障碍、有和没有共病的患者和 29 名健康对照者在内的年轻参与者进行了静息态功能磁共振成像和全脑功能连接分析。与健康对照组相比，单纯游戏障碍患者的奖励系统和执行控制网络的连接部分减弱，其中存在作为连接减弱中心节点的核心节点。在伴有自闭症谱系障碍共病的游戏障碍患者中，减弱的连接扩大，并改变了枢纽节点，包括涉及奖励处理的皮质、皮质下和边缘区域以及组成执行控制网络的整个皮质区域的整个奖励系统的脑区。这些观察结果表明，与游戏障碍共存的神经发育状况通过重新排列和减弱网络中的功能连接，对与执行/认知和情绪功能相关的神经组织造成了实质性的损害，这可能是导致行为成瘾的原因。
