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Internet gaming disorder: deficits in functional and structural connectivity in the ventral tegmental area-Accumbens pathway

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A Correction to this article was published on 05 November 2018

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Abstract

Dopamine projections from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) to the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and from the substantia nigra (SN) to the dorsal striatum are involved in addiction. However, relatively little is known about the implication of these circuits in Internet gaming disorder (IGD). This study examined the alteration of resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) -based structural connectivity of VTA/SN circuits in 61 young male participants (33 IGD and 28 healthy controls). Correlation analysis was carried out to investigate the relationship between the neuroimaging findings and the behavioral Internet Addiction Test (IAT). Both the NAc and medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) showed lower RSFC with VTA in IGD subjects compared with controls. Moreover, the RSFC strength of VTA-right NAc and VTA-left mOFC correlated negatively with IAT in IGD subjects. The IGD subjects also showed lower structural connectivity in bilateral VTA-NAc tracts compared with controls, but the connectivity did not correlate with IAT in IGD. We provide evidence that functional and structural connectivity of the VTA-NAc pathway, and functional connectivity of the VTA-mOFC pathway are implicated in IGD. Since these pathways are important for dopamine reward signals and salience attribution, the findings suggest involvement of the brain DA reward system in the neurobiology of IGD. The association of functional but not structural connectivity of VTA circuits with IAT suggests that while lower structural connectivity might underlie vulnerability for IGD, lower functional connectivity may modulate severity. These results strengthen the evidence that IGD shares similar neuropathology with other addictions.

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  • 05 November 2018

    The original version of this article contained mistakes, and the authors would like to correct them. The correct details are given below:

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 81571751, 81571753, 61771266, 81701780, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under the Grant No. JB151204, the program for Young Talents of Science and Technology in Universities of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region NJYT-17-B11, the Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia under Grant No. 2017MS(LH)0814, the program of Science and Technology in Universities of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region NJZY17262, the Innovation Fund Project of Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology No. 2015QNGG03, National Natural Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province under Grant Nos. 2018JM7075, 2017JM6051.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Science and Technology, Xidian University, Xi’an, Shaanxi, 710071, People’s Republic of China

    Ruonan Wang, Min Li, Meng Zhao, Yu Hu & Kai Yuan

  2. Engineering Research Center of Molecular and Neuro Imaging Ministry of Education, Xi’an, People’s Republic of China

    Ruonan Wang, Min Li, Meng Zhao, Yu Hu & Kai Yuan

  3. Inner Mongolia Key Laboratory of Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Image Processing, School of Information Engineering, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, Baotou, Inner Mongolia, 014010, People’s Republic of China

    Dahua Yu & Kai Yuan

  4. National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA

    Corinde E. Wiers, Gene-Jack Wang, Nora D. Volkow & Kai Yuan

  5. National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, 20892, USA

    Nora D. Volkow

  6. Guangxi Key Laboratory of Multi-Source Information Mining and Security, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, People’s Republic of China

    Kai Yuan

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  1. Ruonan Wang
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  2. Min Li
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  9. Kai Yuan
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Additional information

The original version of this article was revised: 1.) Fig.2b, the 9 in the IAT axis of the correlation plot between VTA-right NAc RSFC and IAT should be 90; 2.) Fig.4d, the “right VTA-NAc mean FA” should be “right VTA-OFC mean FA”.

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Wang, R., Li, M., Zhao, M. et al. Internet gaming disorder: deficits in functional and structural connectivity in the ventral tegmental area-Accumbens pathway. Brain Imaging and Behavior 13, 1172–1181 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-018-9929-6

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