Distinct Situational Cue Processing in Individuals with Kleptomania: A Preliminary Study

Impulse control disorder has been suggested to meet the criteria of addiction and is often considered a behavioral addiction; however, few studies have examined whether the disorder involves altered responses to situational cues that are associated with symptoms. In this study, we examined behavioral and neural responses to situational cues among individuals with an impulse control disorder: kleptomania.

Healthy adults and kleptomania patients whose symptoms were characterized by repetitive, uncontrolled shoplifting of sales goods in stores were recruited. Images with and without situational cues (e.g., a grocery store) were presented, and gazing patterns for the images were detected with the eye-tracker. Additionally, prefrontal cortical (PFC) responses were measured using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. PFC activities were further examined while participants were watching video clips in virtual reality with and without situational cues.

Among kleptomania patients, the gazing pattern for an image with situational cues was distinct from gazing patterns for other images; such differences were not observed in healthy individuals. Consistent with gazing patterns, PFC local network responses by hemoglobin changes to images and videos with situational cues were substantially different from other images and videos in kleptomania patients, whereas PFC responses were consistent across all image and video presentations in healthy individuals.

These results suggest that kleptomania patients may perceive situational cues associated with their problematic behaviors differently from healthy individuals.