Abstract
Internet gaming disorder (IGD) may lead to many negative consequences in everyday life, yet there is currently no effective treatment for IGD. Cue-reactivity paradigm is commonly used to evaluate craving for substance, food, and gambling; cue exposure therapy (CET) is applied to treating substance use disorders (SUDs) and some other psychological disorders such as pathological gambling (PG). However, no study has explored CET’s application to the treatment of IGD except two articles having implied that cues’ exposure may have therapeutic effect on IGD. This paper reviews studies on cue-induced behavioral and neural changes in excessive Internet gamers, indicating that behavioral and neural mechanisms of IGD mostly overlap with those of SUD. The CET’s effects in the treatment of SUDs and PG are also reviewed. We finally propose an optimized CET paradigm, which future studies should consider and investigate as a probable treatment of IGD.
Highlights
Internet gaming disorder (IGD), is arguably the most problematic form of Internet use (Petry and O’Brien, 2013) and is different from other forms of problematic Internet use in terms of its prevalence rates, etiologies, characteristics of persons participating in them, and risks for harm (Ko et al, 2007, 2009b; van Rooij et al, 2010)
This study reported a memory retrievalextinction procedure that successfully decreased cue-induced craving in abstinent heroin abusers 1, 30, and 180 days later, and concluded that in extinction sessions, cue exposure can only work within a specific time interval termed “reconsolidation window” (Tronson and Taylor, 2007; Nader and Hardt, 2009) which is up to 2 h after memory retrieval
In view of Cue exposure therapy (CET)’s efficacy in decreasing craving for substancerelated cues, its extinction of cue-response association (Antoine et al, 2014) and the overlaps between IGD and substance use disorders (SUDs) with regard to their neural and behavioral mechanisms, we suggest taking more studies on the effect of applying CET paradigm to the treatment of IGD
Summary
Internet gaming disorder (IGD), is arguably the most problematic form of Internet use (Petry and O’Brien, 2013) and is different from other forms of problematic Internet use in terms of its prevalence rates, etiologies, characteristics of persons participating in them, and risks for harm (Ko et al, 2007, 2009b; van Rooij et al, 2010). Recent studies have shown that it is necessary to replace pharmacotherapy with intervention on sensitivity and reactivity to environmental cues in treating substance use disorders (SUDs; Perry et al, 2011). Cue exposure therapy (CET) is such an intervention and is based on Pavlov’s theory of. The aim of CET is to diminish conditioned relation between an addictive cue (CS) and a physiological response (CR) by systematically pairing them in a treatment setting. Cue exposure therapy is widely used in treating SUDs (Maltby et al, 2002; Hofmann et al, 2006; Costa et al, 2008; Reger and Gahm, 2008; Vögele et al, 2010). We briefly review studies using game-related cues to induce behavioral or neural changes among excessive Internet gamers, and discuss possible adoption of CET in treating IGD
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