ORIGINAL RESEARCH
The topological organization of white matter network in internet
gaming disorder individuals
Jinquan Zhai
1
&
Lin Luo
1
&
Lijun Qiu
1
&
Yongqiang Kang
1
&
Bo Liu
1
&
Dahua Yu
2
&
Xiaoqi Lu
2
&
Kai Yuan
3
Published online: 4 November 2016
#
Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
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 integ-
rity and organization of relevant underlying WM fiber tracts’
architectures, which has been used to investigate the connec-
tivity of cortical and subcortical structures in several brain
disorders. Unfortunately, relatively little is known about the
thoroughly circuit-level characterization of topological prop-
erty 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 efficien-
cy and increased shortest path length. Further analysis re-
vealed 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 as-
sociation with the severity of IGD, which may provide new
insights into the neural mechanism of IGD from WM network
level.
Keywords Internetgamingdisorder
.
Whitematter
.
Diffusion
tensor imaging
.
Internet addiction test
.
Graph theory
Introduction
Internet gaming disorder (IGD) has been increasingly attracting
attention from public and the scientific community around the
whole world (Ko et al. 2012b). Several countries in Asia, partic-
ularly China, South Korea, and Taiwan region, have been report-
ed to have the highest incidence of Internet addiction among
adolescents (Fitzpatrick 2008). IGD has been linked to a lot of
problems, such as social withdrawal, self-neglect, poor diet and
family problems (Murali and George 2007). Previous findings
suggested that addiction is a disease that emerges gradually and
that has its onset predominantly during a particular risk period:
adolescence (Volkow et al. 2016). Adolescence is a developmen-
tal stage, encompassed by alterations in physical, psychological,
andsocialdevelopment(Ernstetal.2006). In addition, adoles-
cence is also a period of enhanced neuroplasticity during which
the underdeveloped neural networks necessary for mature judg-
ment (the prefrontal cortical regions) cannot yet properly regulate
emotion and behaviors (Casey et al. 2008). Thus, it is critical to
Jinquan Zhai and Lin Luo contributed equally to this article.
* Lin Luo
byccl@sina.com
* Kai Yuan
kyuan@xidian.edu.cn
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’sRepublicof
China
2
Information Processing Laboratory, School of Information
Engineering, Inner Mongolia University of Science and Technology,
Baotou, Inner Mongolia, People’s Republic of China
3
School of Life Science and Technology, Xidian University,
Xi’an, Shaanxi 710071, People’s Republic of China
Brain Imaging and Behavior (2017) 11:1769–1778
DOI 10.1007/s11682-016-9652-0
@Phil_Robichaud
@deepthiw
@JoseServera