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The topological organization of white matter network in internet gaming disorder individuals

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Abstract

White matter (WM) integrity abnormalities had been reported in Internet gaming disorder (IGD). Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) tractography allows identification of WM tracts, potentially providing information about the integrity and organization of relevant underlying WM fiber tracts’ architectures, which has been used to investigate the connectivity of cortical and subcortical structures in several brain disorders. Unfortunately, relatively little is known about the thoroughly circuit-level characterization of topological property changes of WM network with IGD. Sixteen right-hand adolescents with IGD participated in our study, according to the diagnostic criteria of IGD in DSM-5. Meanwhile, 16 age and gender-matched healthy controls were also enrolled. DTI tractography was employed to generate brain WM networks in IGD individuals and healthy controls. The 90 cortical and subcortical regions derived from AAL template were chosen as the nodes. The network parameters (i.e., Network strength, clustering coefficient, shortest path length, global efficiency, local efficiency, regional efficiency) were calculated and then correlated with the Internet addiction test (IAT) scores in IGD. IGD group showed decreased global efficiency, local efficiency and increased shortest path length. Further analysis revealed the reduced nodal efficiency in frontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and pallidium in IGD. In addition, the global efficiency of WM network was correlated with the IAT scores in IGD (r = −0.5927; p = 0.0155). We reported the abnormal topological organization of WM network in IGD and the association with the severity of IGD, which may provide new insights into the neural mechanism of IGD from WM network level.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant nos. 81571751, 81571753, 61502376, 81401478, 81401488, 81470816, 81471737, 81301281, 81271546, 81271549, the Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China under Grant no. 2014JQ4118, and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under the Grant nos. JB151204, JB121405, the Natural Science Foundation of Inner Mongolia under Grant no. 2014BS0610, the Innovation Fund Project of Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology Nos. 2015QNGG03, 2014QDL002, General Financial Grant the China Post- doctoral Science Foundation under Grant no. 2014 M552416.

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    1. Department of Medical Imaging, The First Affiliated Hospital of Baotou Medical College, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, Baotou, Inner Mongolia, 014010, People’s Republic of China

      Jinquan Zhai, Lin Luo, Lijun Qiu, Yongqiang Kang & Bo Liu

    2. Information Processing Laboratory, School of Information Engineering, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology, Baotou, Inner Mongolia, People’s Republic of China

      Dahua Yu & Xiaoqi Lu

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

      Kai Yuan

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    Jinquan Zhai, Lin Luo, Lijun Qiu, Yongqiang Kang, Bo Liu, Dahua Yu, Xiaoqi Lu, Kai Yuan declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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    Jinquan Zhai and Lin Luo contributed equally to this article.

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    Zhai, J., Luo, L., Qiu, L. et al. The topological organization of white matter network in internet gaming disorder individuals. Brain Imaging and Behavior 11, 1769–1778 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-016-9652-0

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