Core networks related disrupted effective connectivity and relationship with sleep disturbances in internet gaming disorder.

BACKGROUND

Internet gaming disorder (IGD) is characterized by increased gaming cravings and sleep disturbances. However, previous studies mainly focused on the relationship between undirected connections among brain regions and IGD features, and rarely reported on directed connections among networks.

METHODS

This study, based on 66 male IGD subjects and 53 healthy controls (HCs), assessed the effective connectivity (EC) differences of intra- and inter-networks for each subject using spectral dynamic causal modeling from eight interest regions (ROI) in the default mode (DMN), salience (SN), executive control (ECN), and cerebellum networks. The Parametric Empirical Bayes (PEB) framework was used to identify the difference between the two groups. In addition, the mediating role of significant differential EC between IGD severity and sleep quality was further explored.

RESULTS

This study observed that four brain networks across HC and IGD subjects showed similarities EC patterns. Compared IGD subjects to healthy controls, abnormal EC in the bottom-up (cerebellum-SN-DMN-ECN) loop was most significantly altered. More importantly, mediation analysis showed that the EC from the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) to the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) partially mediated the impact of IGD severity on sleep quality.

CONCLUSIONS

This study revealed the disrupted neural causality among DMN, SN, ECN, and cerebellum in IGD subjects and emphasized the potential of DMN-SN interaction in studying sleep disturbances in IGD, which amplify the pathophysiological mechanisms and explain the pathological gaming behaviors of IGD subjects.