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. 2013 Nov 4;8(11):e78708.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0078708. eCollection 2013.

Amplitude of low frequency fluctuation abnormalities in adolescents with online gaming addiction

Kai Yuan  1 , Chenwang Jin, Ping Cheng, Xuejuan Yang, Tao Dong, Yanzhi Bi, Lihong Xing, Karen M von Deneen, Dahua Yu, Junyu Liu, Jun Liang, Tingting Cheng, Wei Qin, Jie Tian
Affiliations

Amplitude of low frequency fluctuation abnormalities in adolescents with online gaming addiction

Kai Yuan et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

The majority of previous neuroimaging studies have demonstrated both structural and task-related functional abnormalities in adolescents with online gaming addiction (OGA). However, few functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies focused on the regional intensity of spontaneous fluctuations in blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) during the resting state and fewer studies investigated the relationship between the abnormal resting-state properties and the impaired cognitive control ability. In the present study, we employed the amplitude of low frequency fluctuation (ALFF) method to explore the local features of spontaneous brain activity in adolescents with OGA and healthy controls during resting-state. Eighteen adolescents with OGA and 18 age-, education- and gender-matched healthy volunteers participated in this study. Compared with healthy controls, adolescents with OGA showed a significant increase in ALFF values in the left medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the left precuneus, the left supplementary motor area (SMA), the right parahippocampal gyrus (PHG) and the bilateral middle cingulate cortex (MCC). The abnormalities of these regions were also detected in previous addiction studies. More importantly, we found that ALFF values of the left medial OFC and left precuneus were positively correlated with the duration of OGA in adolescents with OGA. The ALFF values of the left medial OFC were also correlated with the color-word Stroop test performance. Our results suggested that the abnormal spontaneous neuronal activity of these regions may be implicated in the underlying pathophysiology of OGA.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. One sample t-test results.
Within-group ALFF maps within the OGA and healthy control groups (p<0.05, FWE corrected, R, right; P, posterior).
Figure 2
Figure 2. Two sample t-test analysis.
(a) ALFF differences between OGA and healthy control groups (OGA>Controls, p<0.05, corrected). Warm colors indicate ALFF increases in patients with OGA. T-score bars are shown on the right. (b) The correlation analysis results between the standardized ALFF values of the left medial OFC, left precuneus and duration of the OGA. Abbreviation: medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC).
Figure 3
Figure 3. Brain-behavior relationship analysis.
The ALFF values of the left OFC were correlated with the color-word Stroop task performance (i.e. response errors) in the OGA group.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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References

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Grants and funding

This paper is supported by the Project for the National Key Basic Research and Development Program (973) under Grant No. 2011CB707700; the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 81227901, 81271644, 81271546, 30930112, 81000640, 81000641, 81101036, 81101108, 31200837, 81030027, 81301281; and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, the Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia under Grant No. 2012MS0908. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.