Abstract
Although the multimodal stimulation provided by modern audiovisual video games is pleasing by itself, the rewarding nature of video game playing depends critically also on the players' active engagement in the gameplay. The extent to which active engagement influences dopaminergic brain reward circuit responses remains unsettled. Here we show that striatal reward circuit responses elicited by successes (wins) and failures (losses) in a video game are stronger during active than vicarious gameplay. Eleven healthy males both played a competitive first-person tank shooter game (active playing) and watched a pre-recorded gameplay video (vicarious playing) while their hemodynamic brain activation was measured with 3-tesla functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Wins and losses were paired with symmetrical monetary rewards and punishments during active and vicarious playing so that the external reward context remained identical during both conditions. Brain activation was stronger in the orbitomedial prefrontal cortex (omPFC) during winning than losing, both during active and vicarious playing. In contrast, both wins and losses suppressed activations in the midbrain and striatum during active playing; however, the striatal suppression, particularly in the anterior putamen, was more pronounced during loss than win events. Sensorimotor confounds related to joystick movements did not account for the results. Self-ratings indicated losing to be more unpleasant during active than vicarious playing. Our findings demonstrate striatum to be selectively sensitive to self-acquired rewards, in contrast to frontal components of the reward circuit that process both self-acquired and passively received rewards. We propose that the striatal responses to repeated acquisition of rewards that are contingent on game related successes contribute to the motivational pull of video-game playing.
Highlights
Video game playing is intrinsically motivating: most people play video games because they are inherently interesting and enjoyable rather than because they provide financial rewards or other external outcomes (Ryan et al, 2006; Przybylski et al, 2009, 2010)
Similar trend was evident in VTA/SN [F(1, 10) = 5.08, P = 0.048, η2 = 0.23]. These results demonstrate that both win and loss events elicited deactivations in the striatum during active playing, activations in nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and aPut returned closer to baseline levels during win events; wins versus losses evoked greater activation changes in aPut during active than vicarious playing
Our results showed an interaction between these two effects; that is, activation changes due to wins versus losses in the striatum, in the anterior putamen, were larger during active than vicarious playing
Summary
Video game playing is intrinsically motivating (cf. Ryan and Deci, 2000): most people play video games because they are inherently interesting and enjoyable rather than because they provide financial rewards or other external outcomes (Ryan et al, 2006; Przybylski et al, 2009, 2010). Brain imaging studies have demonstrated that video game playing engages key motivational systems of the brain, as evidenced by increases in dopamine release (Koepp et al, 1998) and hemodynamic activations (Hoeft et al, 2008) in the striatum (see Kätsyri et al, 2012). It is possible that the motivational pull of video games could be explained by the amplified reward responses triggered by actively obtaining rewards during gameplay. We tested this hypothesis by contrasting reward circuit responses to success- and failure-related gameplay events during active and vicarious video-game playing—that is, situations
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