Gender difference in network relationship between inter-temporal decisions and prefrontal activation levels in internet gaming disorder

Hui Zheng; Weiran Zhou; Min Wang; Hao-Hao Dong; Chunlei Lu; Jia-Lin Zhang; Xue-Feng Ma; Yanbo Hu; Guang-Heng Dong

doi:10.1093/psyrad/kkad015

Gender difference in network relationship between inter-temporal decisions and prefrontal activation levels in internet gaming disorder

Psychoradiology. 2023 Sep 15:3:kkad015. doi: 10.1093/psyrad/kkad015. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Hui Zheng^{1

2}, Weiran Zhou³, Min Wang⁴, Hao-Hao Dong⁵, Chunlei Lu⁶, Jia-Lin Zhang⁷, Xue-Feng Ma³, Yanbo Hu⁸, Guang-Heng Dong^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming, Yunnan Province 650500, China.
² Shanghai Key Laboratory of Psychotic Disorders, Brain Health Institute, National Center for Mental Disorders, Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200030, China.
³ Center for Cognition and Brain Disorders, The Affiliated Hospital of Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province 311121, China.
⁴ School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230022, P.R. China.
⁵ Department of Psychology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province 210008, China.
⁶ Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, Zhejiang Province 321004, China.
⁷ Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
⁸ State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning and IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing 100875, China.

Abstract

Background: Impulsivity and decision-making are key factors in addiction. However, little is known about how gender and time sensitivity affect impulsivity in internet gaming disorder (IGD).

Objective: To investigate the gender difference of impulsive decision-making and relevant brain responses in IGD.

Methods: We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study with 123 participants, including 59 IGD individuals (26 females) and 64 matched recreational game users (RGUs, 23 females). Participants performed a delay-discounting task during fMRI scanning. We examined gender-by-group effects on behavioral and neural measures to explore the preference for immediate over delayed rewards and the associated brain activity. We also investigated the network correlations between addiction severity and behavioral and neural measures, and analyzed the mediating role of brain activity in the link between delay discounting parameters and IGD severity.

Results: We found significant gender-by-group interactions. The imaging results revealed gender-by-group interactions in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, medial frontal gyrus, and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Post hoc analysis indicated that, for females, RGUs showed higher activity than IGD individuals in these brain regions, while for males IGD individuals exhibited higher activity than RGUs. The activation in the left IFG mediated the relation between Internet Addiction Test score and discount rate in females. In males, the activation in the right dlPFC mediated the relation between IAT score and time sensitivity.

Discussion: Our findings imply that male IGD participants demonstrate impaired intertemporal decisions associated with neural dysfunction. Influencing factors for impulsive decision-making in IGD diverge between males (time sensitivity) and females (discount rate). These findings augment our comprehension of the neural underpinnings of gender differences in IGD and bear significant implications for devising effective intervention strategies for treating people with IGD.

Keywords: delay discounting; discount rate; internet gaming disorder; time sensitivity.