A Scientometric Analysis and Critical Review of Internet Gaming Disorder Behaviours

There are increasing concerns about internet gaming disorder (IGD). No review of existing studies has systematicallyanalyzed and visualized the trends of IGD and those early identification of symptoms related to IGD behaviors.This critical review focuses on the emerging trends for early identification of symptoms related to IGDbehaviors in papers published in Web of Science Core Collection from 2009 to 2021 by scientometric analysisand critical review. Scientometric data analysis technique includes co-occurrence analysis, cluster analysis andburst analysis of authors, countries, keywords and co-citation to visualize those contributing and associated factorsto develop IGD behaviors and their relationships to mental-emotional symptoms. About 81.8% of the paperswere published in the following countries: United States, United Kingdom, Australia, China and South Korea. Thetop co-occurrence keywords were ‘children’, ‘depression’, ‘anxiety’ and ‘attention deficit hyperactivity disorder(ADHD)’, ‘scale’, identifying the population, characteristics and commonly used assessment tools that are susceptibleto certain symptoms relating to IGD of which influencing factors facilitate the understanding of the associationof sociodemographic characteristics. The main emerging topics were identified in this critical review afterconducted the scientometric analysis. The results identified five topics: game impulse, motivation, evaluationscale, mediating effects and diagnostic criteria. This study provides an overview of the research trends on theidentity and development of the IGD field of study.

Gender difference in network relationship between inter-temporal decisions and prefrontal activation levels in internet gaming disorder

Background:Impulsivity and decision-making are key factors in addiction.However,little is known about how gender and time sensitivity affect impulsivity in internet gaming disorder(IGD).Objective:To investigate the gender difference of impulsive decision-making and relevant brain responses in IGD.Methods:We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI)study with 123 participants,including 59 IGD individuals(26 females)and 64 matched recreational game users(RGUs,23 females).Participants performed a delay-discounting task during fMRI scanning.We examined gender-by-group effects on behavioral and neural measures to explore the preference for immediate over delayed rewards and the associated brain activity.We also investigated the network correlations between addiction severity and behavioral and neural measures,and analyzed the mediating role of brain activity in the link between delay discounting parameters and IGD severity.Results:We found significant gender-by-group interactions.The imaging results revealed gender-by-group interactions in the dor-solateral prefrontal cortex,medial frontal gyrus,and inferior frontal gyrus(IFG).Post hoc analysis indicated that,for females,RGUs showed higher activity than IGD individuals in these brain regions,while for males IGD individuals exhibited higher activity than RGUs.The activation in the left IFG mediated the relation between Internet Addiction Test score and discount rate in females.In males,the activation in the right dlPFC mediated the relation between IAT score and time sensitivity.Discussion:Our findings imply that male IGD participants demonstrate impaired intertemporal decisions associated with neural dysfunction.Influencing factors for impulsive decision-making in IGD diverge between males(time sensitivity)and females(discount rate).These findings augment our comprehension of the neural underpinnings of gender differences in IGD and bear significant implications for devising effective intervention strategies for treating people with IGD.

Associations between levels of Internet Gaming Disorder symptoms and striatal morphology–replication and associations with social anxiety

Background:Brain structural alterations of the striatum have been frequently observed in internet gaming disorder(IGD);however,the replicability of the results and the associations with social-affective dysregulations such as social anxiety remain to be determined.Methods:The present study combined a dimensional neuroimaging approach with both voxel-wise and data-driven multivariate approaches to(i)replicate our previous results on a negative association between IGD symptom load(assessed by the Internet Gaming Disorder Scale-Short Form)and striatal volume,(ii)extend these findings to female individuals,and(iii)employ multivariate and mediation models to determine common brain structural representations of IGD and social anxiety(assessed by the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale).Results:In line with the original study,the voxel-wise analyses revealed a negative association between IGD and volumes of the bilateral caudate.Going beyond the earlier study investigating only male participants,the present study demonstrates that the association in the right caudate was comparable in both the male and the female subsamples.Further examination using themultivariate approach revealed regionally different associations between IGD and social anxiety with striatal density representations in the dorsal striatum(caudate)and ventral striatum(nucleus accumbens).Higher levels of IGD were associated with higher social anxiety and the association was critically mediated by the multivariate neurostructural density variations of the striatum.Conclusions:Altered striatal volumes may represent a replicable and generalizable marker of IGD symptoms.However,exploratory multivariate analyses revealed more complex and regional specific associations between striatal density and IGD as well as social anxiety symptoms.Variations in both tendencies may share common structural brain representations,which mediate the association between increased IGD and social anxiety.