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Updated: Dec 28, 2025
Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation for Online Gamers
Published on: November 9, 2019
Altered neural processing of negative stimuli in people with internet gaming disorder: fMRI evidence from the
Jialin Zhang1, Haohao Dong2, Zhen Zhao2
1Center for Cognition and Brain Disorders, The Affiliated Hospital of Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou 311121, Zhejiang, China.
Background:
Abundant clinical studies have suggested that emotion dysregulation seems to be the essential pathogenesis for Internet gaming disorder (IGD). However, the neural mechanism of emotion regulation for IGD is still unclear.
Methods:
Subjective evaluation and fMRI data were collected from 50 subjects (IGD: 24; recreational game user (RGU): 26) while they were performing an emotion reappraisal task. We collected and compared their brain features during emotion processing of different visual stimuli.
Results:
Higher activation in the left dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), right ventral ACC, left claustrum and bilateral insula was observed in participants with IGD during emotion reappraisal relative to that of the RGU participants. In addition, generalized psychophysiological interaction analysis also showed that IGD participants had stronger functional connectivity between the right insula and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) than the RGU participants.
Conclusions:
The results suggest that IGD participants could not down-regulate their negative emotional experiences as efficiently as the RGU participants, although they engaged more cognitive resources. These results reveal the special neural circuits of emotion dysregulation in IGD individuals and provide new neural perspective for the intervention of IGD.
