Dysfunction of the frontolimbic region during swear word processing in young adolescents with Internet gaming disorder.

J-W Chun,S-K Lee,D J Kim,H Cho,J Choi

doi:10.1038/tp.2015.106

Abstract

Although the Internet is an important tool in our daily life, the control of Internet use is necessary to address difficult problems. This study set out with the aim of assessing the cognitive control of affective events in Internet gaming disorder (IGD) and has examined the influence of IGD on neural activities with regard to swear words in young adolescents. We demonstrated the differences between adolescents with IGD and healthy control adolescents (HC) with respect to swear, negative and neutral word conditions. Swear words induced more activation in regions related to social interaction and emotional processing such as the superior temporal sulcus, right temporoparietal junction and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) when compared with negative words. In this study, adolescents with IGD exhibited reduced activation in the right OFC related to cognitive control and in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) related to social rejection during the swear word condition. In addition, adolescents with IGD were negatively correlated with activity in the right amygdala toward swear words, indicating the important role of the amygdala in the control of aggression in adolescents with IGD. These findings enhance our understanding of social–emotional perception in adolescents with IGD.

Highlights

The past two decades have seen increasingly rapid advances in the Internet as a medium for activities that we use to make our daily life convenient and that we regard as important parts of our life such as banking, purchasing movie tickets, making reservations, reading news and a host of others
Prior studies have reported neuropsychological and neuroimaging research on excessive and addictive use of the Internet[1] and have noted problems associated with Internet addiction in adolescence.[11,48,49]
Internet gaming disorder (IGD) showed less activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus, left caudate nucleus and right middle temporal gyrus compared with healthy control adolescents (HC)

Summary

Introduction

The past two decades have seen increasingly rapid advances in the Internet as a medium for activities that we use to make our daily life convenient and that we regard as important parts of our life such as banking, purchasing movie tickets, making reservations, reading news and a host of others. Despite the growing concern about problematic Internet/Internet gaming use, a consensus about the diagnosis and assessment of the relevant disorder has not yet been reached among researchers and clinicians. Internet gaming disorder (IGD) has been included in Section 3 of the research appendix of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual version-5 IGD, a subtype of Internet addiction,[4] is related to the compulsive use of online games. It has been shown that the principal behavior criterion of IGD is the loss of control over Internet use and is represented as persistence in online gaming use despite the awareness that it is directly harmful to one’s psychosocial performance.[7,8,9]

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