Physiological Regularity and Synchrony in Individuals with Gaming Disorder

Individuals with gaming disorder (GD) show emotional dysregulation and autonomic dysfunction in daily life. Although studies have shown that the relaxation method of breathing exercise (BE) improves cardiopulmonary synchrony, the physiological regularity and synchrony of GD remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the regularities of pulse wave (PW), thoracic wall movement (TWM), and abdominal wall movement (AWM) using sample entropy (SE) and assessed the vascular-respiratory and TWM-AWM synchrony using cross-sample entropy (CSE). Twenty individuals with GD and 26 healthy control (HC) individuals participated in baseline, gaming, and recovery stages, both before and after BEs. The results showed that both groups had significantly higher SE_TWM, SE_AWM, and CSE_TWM-AWM during gaming than baseline. Before BE, CSE_PW-TWM and CSE_PW-AWM during gaming were considerably higher in the GD group than in the HC group. Compared to before BE, both groups had decreased SE_TWM and CSE_TWM-AWM during gaming, particularly in the HC group. Online gaming may induce pulse wave and respiratory irregularities, as well as thoracic-abdominal wall movement asynchrony. Individuals with GD who engage in prolonged gaming periods may exhibit lower vascular-respiratory synchrony compared to the HC group. SE_TWM, SE_AWM, CSE_TWM-AWM, CSE_PW-TWM, and CSE_PW-AWM may serve as biomarkers for assessing the risk of GD. BE may improve TWM regularity and vascular-respiratory synchrony during gaming, potentially alleviating addictive behavior.