Department of Psychology, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, Yunnan Province, PR China; Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Research in Assessment of Cognitive Impairments, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, PR China.
Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Brain Health Institute, National Center for Mental Disorders, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
J Psychiatr Res. 2023 Sep;165:233-240. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2023.07.027. Epub 2023 Jul 21.
Impaired decision-making was observed in internet gaming disorder (IGD), however, these studies did not differentiate 'hard' to 'easy' decisions, and only the 'hard' decision-making could reveal the mechanism underlying this issue.
We recruited forty-eight individuals with IGD and forty-six recreational internet game users (RGUs) as a control group in this study. fMRI data were collected when they were finishing a value-matching delayed discount task (DDT), which included easy and hard decisions judging based on the indifference points of every participant. The correlations between brain responses during DDT and IGD severity and the effective connectivity between brain regions were calculated.
Compared to RGUs, IGD subjects showed enhanced activation in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) when facing hard choices, and this feature was associated with IGD severity. In addition, individuals with IGD showed increased effective connectivity from the OFC to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the OFC to the occipital lobe and decreased effective connectivity from the occipital lobe to the OFC.
The current study showed that the abnormal activation in the OFC was associated with IGD severity and higher OFC-DLPFC/OFC-occipital lobe effective connectivity and lower occipital lobe-OFC effective connectivity when individuals with IGD faced different choices in the DDT. These findings suggest the neural mechanisms of impulsive decision-making in individuals with IGD due to dysfunction with subjective evaluation and dysfunction of the connection with the executive control system.
在网络成瘾障碍（IGD）中观察到决策受损，但这些研究没有区分“难”决策和“易”决策，只有“难”决策才能揭示这一问题背后的机制。
本研究招募了 48 名 IGD 患者和 46 名娱乐性网络游戏使用者（RGUs）作为对照组。当他们完成价值匹配延迟折扣任务（DDT）时，采集 fMRI 数据，该任务根据每个参与者的无差异点来判断“易”决策和“难”决策。计算了 DDT 期间大脑反应与 IGD 严重程度之间的相关性以及脑区之间的有效连接。
与 RGUs 相比，IGD 患者在面对困难选择时，眶额皮层（OFC）的激活增强，这一特征与 IGD 严重程度相关。此外，IGD 个体表现出从 OFC 到背外侧前额叶皮层和 OFC 到枕叶的有效连接增加，以及从枕叶到 OFC 的有效连接减少。
本研究表明，当 IGD 个体在 DDT 中面临不同选择时，OFC 中的异常激活与 IGD 严重程度相关，OFC-DLPFC/OFC-枕叶的有效连接增加，OFC-枕叶的有效连接减少，这表明了 IGD 个体冲动决策的神经机制，是由于主观评估功能障碍和与执行控制系统的连接功能障碍所致。
