Addiction-like alterations of brain activity in recreational video gamers detected via the cue-reactivity fMRI experiment

The non-substance addictions are starting to be classified as diseases or disorders, but their diagnostics strongly rely on questionnaires, making it unclear if there any underlying changes prior to reaching the addiction detection threshold. We aim to detect if the volunteers with extensive consumption of video games, yet below the IGD-20 test addiction threshold, i.e., the recreational gamers, exhibit any changes in the brain function similar to the ones in substance- and non-substance addictions. We have selected 47 participants classified as test and control groups based on their weekly average gaming time. We perform functional magnetic resonance imaging with individualized cue-reactivity paradigm and compare the results of the general linear model and psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses between the groups. The measurements demonstrate activation difference in several areas, and changes in PPI between a number of seed/voxel cluster pairs. We have classified the detected changes according to the Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution model and found that the affective and executive functions are likely to be affected by recreational gaming, while the cognitive functions are not. The results suggest that these changes along with the reinforcement feedback loop suggested by the model can put the recreational gamers in the addiction development risk group.