Internet addicts show impaired interference control ability: Event-related potentials and oscillatory brain responses associated with Stroop Task

Impairment in interference control and inhibitory control is common among people with internet addiction disorders (IAD). The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation between interference control and event-related spectral perturbations (ERSPs) as well as to examine conflict monitoring indices in IADs.Methods: Participants were recruited from the IAD (n = 21) and healthy control (HC) (n = 20) and administered both the Stroop and a modified version of the Stroop tasks while electroencephalography was recorded. A comparison of the pre-onset baseline with the grand averaged ERP activity was made to determine the distribution of early MFN, late MFN, and SP components. To measure the difference in power between two groups at each time frequency point, event-related spectral perturbations (ERSP) were extracted from the EEG. Furthermore, a cluster-based random permutation test was used.Results: In comparison to the HC group, the IAD group would display decreased ERP activity in early and late MFN due to diminished ability to detect stimulus and response conflicts. Moreover, IAD participants showed reduced activity in conflict SP as a result of defective neuronal reflections of compensatory cognitive control and adjustment processes. On the basis of ERSP of the EEG, it was concluded that low-frequency (theta) and high-frequency (beta2 and gamma) bands are significantly involved in interference control. In contrast to what was observed in the HC group, the ERSP Stroop effect in theta was significantly reduced for the IAD group in an earlier time window. This study indicates that individuals with IADs have impaired executive function, which means that they are unable to prevent their brains from activating in response to conflicting stimuli. Furthermore, ERSP Stroop effects were significantly higher for IAD participants over the scalp at beta2 and gamma frequencies - with a major contribution coming from bilateral dorsal frontal and parietal cortexConclusions: According to the results, participants with IAD exhibited diminished conflict detection and response selection compared to HCs, as well as diminished conflict resolution, as revealed by damage interaction dynamics in the beta2 and gamma bands. Furthermore, our results indicate that participants with IAD would display a diminished conflict monitoring effect against HCs as indicated by the early and late MFN indices. The current study also revealed that IAD participants exhibited attenuated conflict adaptation compared with HC participants as evidenced by identical conflict SP amplitudes between the two groups.