Altered Reward Processing System in Internet Gaming Disorder

Syeda Raiha; Guochun Yang; Lingxiao Wang; Weine Dai; Haiyan Wu; Guangteng Meng; Bowei Zhong; Xun Liu

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2020.599141

Altered Reward Processing System in Internet Gaming Disorder

Front Psychiatry. 2020 Dec 4:11:599141. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.599141. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Syeda Raiha^{1

2}, Guochun Yang^{1

2}, Lingxiao Wang^{3

4}, Weine Dai^{1

5

6

7}, Haiyan Wu⁸, Guangteng Meng^{1

2}, Bowei Zhong^{1

2}, Xun Liu^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
² Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
³ Center for Cognition and Brain Disorders, The Affiliated Hospital of Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.
⁴ Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Research in Assessment of Cognitive Impairments, Hangzhou, China.
⁵ Sino-Danish College, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
⁶ Sino-Danish Center for Education and Research, Beijing, China.
⁷ CFIN and Pet Center, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
⁸ Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences and Department of Psychology, University of Macau, Taipa, Macau.

Abstract

Converging evidence indicates that addiction involves impairment in reward processing systems. However, the patterns of dysfunction in different stages of reward processing in internet gaming addiction remain unclear. In previous studies, individuals with internet gaming disorder were found to be impulsive and risk taking, but there is no general consensus on the relation between impulsivity and risk-taking tendencies in these individuals. The current study explored behavioral and electrophysiological responses associated with different stages of reward processing among individuals with internet gaming disorders (IGDs) with a delayed discounting task and simple gambling tasks. Compared to the healthy control (HC) group, the IGD group discounted delays more steeply and made more risky choices, irrespective of the outcome. As for the event-related potential (ERP) results, during the reward anticipation stage, IGDs had the same stimulus-preceding negativity (SPN) for both large and small choices, whereas HCs exhibited a higher SPN in large vs. small choices. During the outcome evaluation stage, IGDs exhibited a blunted feedback-related negativity for losses vs. gains. The results indicate impairment across different stages of reward processing among IGDs. Moreover, we found negative correlation between impulsivity indexed by BIS-11 and reward sensitivity indexed by SPN amplitude during anticipation stage only, indicating different neural mechanisms at different stages of reward processing. The current study helps to elucidate the behavioral and neural mechanisms of reward processing in internet gaming addiction.

Keywords: ERP; addiction; feedback-related negativity; gaming addiction; impulsivity; internet gaming; reward processing; stimulus-preceding negativity.