Physiological Regularity and Synchrony in Individuals with Gaming Disorder

Area of Science:

• Physiology
• Autonomic Nervous System Research
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• Individuals with gaming disorder (GD) often experience emotional dysregulation and autonomic dysfunction.
• Breathing exercises (BE) are known to improve cardiopulmonary synchrony, but their effect on physiological regularity in GD is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the physiological regularity and synchrony of pulse wave (PW), thoracic wall movement (TWM), and abdominal wall movement (AWM) in individuals with GD.
• To assess the impact of breathing exercises (BE) on these physiological parameters during online gaming.

Main Methods:

• Sample entropy (SE) was used to measure the regularity of PW, TWM, and AWM.
• Cross-sample entropy (CSE) was employed to evaluate vascular-respiratory (PW-TWM, PW-AWM) and thoracic-abdominal synchrony (TWM-AWM).
• Twenty individuals with GD and 26 healthy controls (HC) were studied during baseline, gaming, and recovery phases, before and after BE.

Main Results:

• Both groups exhibited increased SE_TWM, SE_AWM, and CSE_TWM-AWM during gaming compared to baseline.
• Before BE, the GD group showed higher CSE_PW-TWM and CSE_PW-AWM during gaming than the HC group.
• After BE, both groups showed reduced SE_TWM and CSE_TWM-AWM during gaming, with a more pronounced effect in the HC group.

Conclusions:

• Online gaming can lead to irregularities in pulse waves, respiration, and thoracic-abdominal movement synchrony.
• Individuals with GD may have reduced vascular-respiratory synchrony during prolonged gaming.
• Specific physiological measures (SE_TWM, SE_AWM, CSE_TWM-AWM, CSE_PW-TWM, CSE_PW-AWM) could serve as biomarkers for GD risk.
• Breathing exercises show potential in improving TWM regularity and vascular-respiratory synchrony during gaming, possibly mitigating addictive behaviors.