Navigating Exploitative Traps: Unveiling the Uncontrollable Reward Seeking of Internet Gaming Disordered Individuals.

BACKGROUND: Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) involves an imbalance in the brain's dual-system, characterized by heightened reward-seeking and diminished cognitive control, which leads to decision-making challenges. The exploration-exploitation strategy is key to decision-making, but how IGD affects this process is unclear. METHODS: To investigate the impact of IGD on decision-making, a modified version of the two-armed bandit task was employed. Participants included 41 IGD individuals and 44 healthy control (HC) individuals. The study assessed the strategies used by participants in the task, particularly focusing on the exploitation-exploration strategy. Additionally, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to examine brain activation patterns during decision-making and estimation phasess. RESULTS: The study found that individuals with IGD demonstrated a higher reliance on exploitative strategies in decision-making due to their elevated value-seeking tendencies and decreased cognitive control. IGD individuals also displayed heightened activation in the pre-supplementary motor area (preSMA) and the ventral striatum (VS) compared to the HC group in both decision-making and estimation phases. Meanwhile, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) showed more inhibition in IGD individuals than in the HC group during exploitative strategies. This inhibition was found to decrease as cognitive control diminished. CONCLUSION: The study concludes that the imbalance in the development of the dual-system in individuals with IGD may lead to an over-reliance on exploitative strategies. This imbalance, marked by increased reward-seeking and reduced cognitive control, contributes to difficulties in decision-making and value-related behavioral processes in IGD individuals.

Impulsivity-related right superior frontal gyrus as a biomarker of internet gaming disorder.

Background: Internet gaming disorder (IGD) is a mental health issue that affects individuals worldwide. However, the lack of knowledge about the biomarkers associated with the development of IGD has restricted the diagnosis and treatment of this disorder. Aims: We aimed to reveal the biomarkers associated with the development of IGD through resting-state brain network analysis and provide clues for the diagnosis and treatment of IGD. Methods: Twenty-six patients with IGD, 23 excessive internet game users (EIUs) who recurrently played internet games but were not diagnosed with IGD and 29 healthy controls (HCs) performed delay discounting task (DDT) and Iowa gambling task (IGT). Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were also collected. Results: Patients with IGD exhibited significantly lower hubness in the right medial orbital part of the superior frontal gyrus (ORBsupmed) than both the EIU and the HC groups. Additionally, the hubness of the right ORBsupmed was found to be positively correlated with the highest excessive internet gaming degree during the past year in the EIU group but not the IGD group; this might be the protective mechanism that prevents EIUs from becoming addicted to internet games. Moreover, the hubness of the right ORBsupmed was found to be related to the treatment outcome of patients with IGD, with higher hubness of this region indicating better recovery when undergoing forced abstinence. Further modelling analysis of the DDT and IGT showed that patients with IGD displayed higher impulsivity during the decision-making process, and impulsivity-related parameters were negatively correlated with the hubness of right ORBsupmed. Conclusions: Our findings revealed that the impulsivity-related right ORBsupmed hubness could serve as a potential biomarker of IGD and provide clues for the diagnosis and treatment of IGD.

Altered white matter functional network in nicotine addiction.

Nicotine addiction is a neuropsychiatric disorder with dysfunction in cortices as well as white matter (WM). The nature of the functional alterations in WM remains unclear. The small-world model can well characterize the structure and function of the human brain. In this study, we utilized the small-world model to compare the WM functional connectivity between 62 nicotine addiction participants (called the discovery sample) and 66 matched healthy controls (called the control sample). We also recruited an independent sample comprising 32 nicotine addicts (called the validation sample) for clinical application. The WM functional network data at the network level showed that the nicotine addiction group revealed decreased small-worldness index (σ) and normalized clustering coefficient (γ) compared with healthy controls. For clinical application, the small-world topology of WM functional connectivity could distinguish nicotine addicts from healthy controls (classification accuracy=0.59323, p = 0.0464). We trained abnormal small-world properties on the discovery sample to identify the severity of nicotine addiction, and the identification was successfully applied to the validation sample (classification accuracy=0.65625, p = 0.0106). Our neuroimaging findings provide direct evidence for WM functional changes in nicotine addiction and suggest that the small-world properties of WM function could be qualified as potential biomarkers in nicotine addiction.

State Boredom Partially Accounts for Gender Differences in Novel Lexicon Learning.

Gender plays an important role in various aspects of second language acquisition, including lexicon learning. Many studies have suggested that compared to males, females are less likely to experience boredom, one of the frequently experienced deactivating negative emotions that may impair language learning. However, the contribution of boredom to gender-related differences in lexicon learning remains unclear. To address this question, here we conducted two experiments with a large sample of over 1,000 college students to explore the relationships between gender differences in boredom and lexicon learning. In Experiment 1, a cohort of 527 participants (238 males) completed the trait and state boredom scales as well as a novel lexicon learning task without awareness of the testing process. In Experiment 2, an independent cohort of 506 participants (228 males) completed the same novel lexicon learning task with prior knowledge of the testing procedure. Results from both experiments consistently showed significant differences between female and male participants in the rate of forgetting words and the state boredom scores, with female participants performing better than male participants. Furthermore, differences in state boredom scores partially explained differences in the rate of forgetting words between female and male participants. These findings demonstrate a novel contribution of state boredom to gender differences in lexicon learning, which provides new insights into better language-learning ability in females.

Smoking related attention alteration in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease-smoking comorbidity.

BACKGROUND: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a respiratory disease that causes a wide range of cognitive impairments. Although COPD-Smoking comorbidity is common, the relationship between smoking and cognitive function in COPD-Smoking comorbidity remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the effect of smoking on cognitive function like attention in COPD-Smoking patients. METHODS: In this study, we used the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scale and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore the effect of smoking on attention in patients with COPD. RESULTS: Behavioral analysis revealed that among patients with COPD the smokers had a shorter course of COPD and showed a worse attention performance than the non-smokers. Resting-state fMRI analysis revealed that among patients with COPD smokers showed lower regional homogeneity (ReHo) value of the fusiform gyrus than non-smokers. Importantly, the ReHo of the fusiform gyrus is positively associated with attention and mediates the effect of smoking on attention in COPD. CONCLUSIONS: In summary, our study provides behavioral and neurobiological evidence supporting the positive effect of smoking on attention in COPD. This may be helpful for understanding and treating COPD and even other diseases comorbid with smoking.

The Effect of Vocabulary Depth and Breadth on English Listening Comprehension Can Depend on How Comprehension Is Measured.

This study examines the relative contribution of vocabulary breadth (VB) and vocabulary depth (VD) to three different listening comprehension measures. One hundred and thirteen English majors were given VB and VD tests, and three listening comprehension tests. Based on three pairs of hierarchical multiple regression analyses, we found that the relative contribution of VB and VD varied across the three listening comprehension tests. Specifically, for the listening test with an expository text dictation to assess integrative skills, both VB and VD made a unique positive contribution to comprehension, but this was greater in the case of depth. For the listening test involving narrative conversations to assess literal comprehension, neither VB nor VD (after controlling for each other) could independently predict comprehension, whereas for the listening test that comprises expository passages to assess inferential comprehension, VD could separately predict comprehension but VB could not. These findings suggest that the relative contribution of VD and VB to listening comprehension may depend on how a listening test is constructed. Therefore, the findings will contribute to listening comprehension and vocabulary knowledge research, and vocabulary teaching and learning.

Actor and Partner Effects of Touch: Touch-Induced Stress Alleviation Is Influenced by Perceived Relationship Quality of the Couple.

Because of the impact of close partner's touch on psychological and physical well-being by alleviating stress, it is important to explore the influence factors that underlie the stress-alleviating effect of close partner's touch. Previous studies suggested that the stress-alleviating effect was different when individuals were touched by different persons. Specifically, the stress was reduced significantly when the individual was touched by the close partner compared with the acquaintance and the stranger. However, whether the stress-alleviating effect of touch was modulated by the close relationship quality is unknown. To examine this question, the participants (n = 61) performed a 3 (i.e., alone, partner no-touch, and partner touch) × 2 (i.e., safety and threat) within-subjects experiment. The results revealed that the stress of the participants alleviated significantly while close partners present with touch compared with without touch during facing a threat. We also found that the relationship quality of couple-members (i.e., participants perceiving the quality of alternatives and the partners' commitment level) modulated touch-induced stress alleviation. Participants perceiving the low quality of alternatives and the high partners' commitment level showed stronger touch-induced stress-alleviating effect than participants perceiving the high quality of alternatives and the low partners' commitment level. The explained variance was around 16.8% jointly for actor and partner effects. These findings provide evidence for explaining the reasons for touch-induced alleviating stress and have important implications for predicting the future effect of interactive behaviors.

Corrigendum: Thinking on Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) in Reading Interventions: Recommendations for Future Research Directions.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00157.].

High Gamma and Beta Temporal Interference Stimulation in the Human Motor Cortex Improves Motor Functions.

Background: Temporal interference (TI) stimulation is a new technique of non-invasive brain stimulation. Envelope-modulated waveforms with two high-frequency carriers can activate neurons in target brain regions without stimulating the overlying cortex, which has been validated in mouse brains. However, whether TI stimulation can work on the human brain has not been elucidated. Objective: To assess the effectiveness of the envelope-modulated waveform of TI stimulation on the human primary motor cortex (M1). Methods: Participants attended three sessions of 30-min TI stimulation during a random reaction time task (RRTT) or a serial reaction time task (SRTT). Motor cortex excitability was measured before and after TI stimulation. Results: In the RRTT experiment, only 70 Hz TI stimulation had a promoting effect on the reaction time (RT) performance and excitability of the motor cortex compared to sham stimulation. Meanwhile, compared with the sham condition, only 20 Hz TI stimulation significantly facilitated motor learning in the SRTT experiment, which was significantly positively correlated with the increase in motor evoked potential. Conclusion: These results indicate that the envelope-modulated waveform of TI stimulation has a significant promoting effect on human motor functions, experimentally suggesting the effectiveness of TI stimulation in humans for the first time and paving the way for further explorations.

Altered brain network organization in romantic love as measured with resting-state fMRI and graph theory.

Romantic love is a complex state that has been seen as similar to addiction. Previous task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have shown that being in love is closely associated with functional brain changes in the reward and motivation system. However, romantic love-related functional connectivity network organization in resting-state fMRI has yet to be elucidated. To that end, here we used resting-state fMRI and graph theory to compare whole-brain functional network topology between an "in-love" group (n = 34, 16 females, currently in love and in a romantic relationship) and a "single" group (n = 32, 14 females, never in love and not in a romantic relationship). Compared to the single group, we found lower network segregation in the love group (i.e., lower small-worldness, mean clustering coefficient, and modularity), and these metrics were negatively associated with scores on the Passionate Love Scale (PLS) (an index of intense passionate/romantic love). Additionally, the love group displayed altered connectivity degree (reflecting the importance of a node): decreased degree in left angular gyrus and left medial orbitofrontal cortex, but increased degree in left fusiform gyrus. Furthermore, local efficiency or degree of these regions was significantly correlated to PLS scores. Taken together, results showed decreased overall brain functional segregation but enhanced emotional-social processing in romantic lovers. These findings provide the first evidence of love-related brain network organization changes and suggest similar but different brain network alterations between romantic love and addiction, providing new insights on the neural systems underlying romantic love.

Corrigendum: Language Learning Enhanced by Massive Multiple Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) and the Underlying Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2017.00095.].

Effect of deactivation of activity patterns related to smoking cue reactivity on nicotine addiction.

With approximately 75% of smokers resuming cigarette smoking after using the Gold Standard Programme for smoking cessation, investigation into novel therapeutic approaches is warranted. Typically, smoking cue reactivity is crucial for smoking behaviour. Here we developed a novel closed-loop, smoking cue reactivity patterns EEG-based neurofeedback protocol and evaluated its therapeutic efficacy on nicotine addiction. During an evoked smoking cue reactivity task participants' brain activity patterns corresponding to smoking cues were obtained with multivariate pattern analysis of all EEG channels data, then during neurofeedback the EEG activity patterns of smoking cue reactivity were continuously deactivated with adaptive closed-loop training. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial, 60 nicotine-dependent participants were assigned to receive two neurofeedback training sessions (∼1 h/session) either from their own brain (n = 30, real-feedback group) or from the brain activity pattern of a matched participant (n = 30, yoked-feedback group). Cigarette craving and craving-related P300 were assessed at pre-neurofeedback and post-neurofeedback. The number of cigarettes smoked per day was assessed at baseline, 1 week, 1 month, and 4 months following the final neurofeedback visit. In the real-feedback group, participants successfully deactivated EEG activity patterns of smoking cue reactivity. The real-feedback group showed significant decrease in cigarette craving and craving-related P300 amplitudes compared with the yoked-feedback group. The rates of cigarettes smoked per day at 1 week, 1 month and 4 months follow-up decreased 30.6%, 38.2%, and 27.4% relative to baseline in the real-feedback group, compared to decreases of 14.0%, 13.7%, and 5.9% in the yoked-feedback group. The neurofeedback effects on craving change and smoking amount at the 4-month follow-up were further predicted by neural markers at pre-neurofeedback. This novel neurofeedback training approach produced significant short-term and long-term effects on cigarette craving and smoking behaviour, suggesting the neurofeedback protocol described herein is a promising brain-based tool for treating addiction.

Cognition, emotion and reward networks associated with sex differences for romantic appraisals.

Romantic love is a cross-culturally universal phenomenon that serves as a commitment device for motivating pair bonding in human beings. Women and men may experience different feelings when viewing the same warm, romantic scenes. To determine which brain systems may be involved in romance perception and examine possible sex differences, we scanned 16 women and 16 men who were intensely in love, using functional MRI. Participants were required to rate the romance level of 60 pictures showing romantic events that may frequently occur during romantic relationship formation. The results showed that greater brain activation was found for men in the insula, PCC (posterior cingulate cortex), and prefrontal gyrus compared with women, primarily under the High-romance condition. In addition, enhanced functional connectivity between the brain regions involved in the High-romance condition in contrast to the Low-romance condition was only found for men. These data suggest that men and women differ in the processing of romantic information and that it may be  more effortful for men to perceive and evaluate romance degree.

Chronic nicotine exposure impairs uncertainty modulation on reinforcement learning in anterior cingulate cortex and serotonin system.

Deficits in the computational processes of reinforcement learning have been suggested to underlie addiction. Additionally, environmental uncertainty, which is encoded in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), modulates reward prediction errors (RPEs) during reinforcement learning and exacerbates addiction. The present study tested whether and how the ACC would have an essential role in drug addiction by failing to use uncertainty to modulate the RPEs during reinforcement learning. In Experiment I, we found that the ACC/medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) did not modulate RPE learning according to uncertainty in smokers. The effect of uncertainty × RPE in the ACC/MPFC was correlated with the learning rate of RPEs and the duration of nicotine use. Experiment II demonstrated that serotonin, but not dopamine, receptor mRNA expression significantly decreased in the ACC of the nicotine exposed compared to the control rats. Furthermore, there was a positive correlation between learning rate and serotonin receptor mRNA expression in the ACC. Therefore, all present results suggest that impairments in uncertainty modulation in the ACC disrupt reinforcement learning processes in chronic nicotine users and contribute to maladaptive decision-making. These findings support interventions for pathological decision-making in drug addiction that strongly focus on the serotonin system in ACC.

Improving Relationships by Elevating Positive Illusion and the Underlying Psychological and Neural Mechanisms.

Romantic relationships are difficult to maintain novel and exciting for long periods of time, and individuals in love are known to engage in a variety of efforts to protect and maintain their romantic relationship. How to protect and maintain these relationships more effectively has, however, plagued people, psychologists, and therapists. Intimate partners typically perceive their relationship and their partners in a positive light or bias, a phenomenon called positive illusion. Interestingly, higher levels of positive illusion between partners have been associated with a decreased risk for relationship dissolution, as well as higher satisfaction, and less conflict or doubt in relationships. These findings indicate that elevating positive illusion amongst romantic partners may be of benefit and improve romantic relationships. In the present article, we discuss solving the paradox of positive illusion. As positive illusion may have relationship-enhancing attributes, we discuss the psychological and neural mechanisms that may underlie positive illusion. By elucidating the mechanisms underlying positive illusion, we shine a spotlight on potential future directions for research that aims to improve positive illusion and thus enhance the satisfaction and longevity of romantic relationships.

The influence of emotional interference on cognitive control: A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies using the emotional Stroop task.

The neural correlates underlying the influence of emotional interference on cognitive control remain a topic of discussion. Here, we assessed 16 neuroimaging studies that used an emotional Stroop task and that reported a significant interaction effect between emotion (stimulus type) and cognitive conflict. There were a total of 330 participants, equaling 132 foci for an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) analysis. Results revealed consistent brain activation patterns related to emotionally-salient stimuli (as compared to emotionally-neutral trials) during cognitive conflict trials [incongruent trials (with task-irrelevant information interfering), versus congruent/baseline trials (less disturbance from task-irrelevant information)], that span the lateral prefrontal cortex (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and inferior frontal gyrus), the medial prefrontal cortex, and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Comparing mild emotional interference trials (without semantic conflict) versus intense emotional interference trials (with semantic conflict), revealed that while concurrent activation in similar brain regions as mentioned above was found for intense emotional interference trials, activation for mild emotional interference trials was only found in the precentral/postcentral gyrus. These data provide evidence for the potential neural mechanisms underlying emotional interference on cognitive control, and further elucidate an important distinction in brain activation patterns for different levels of emotional conflict across emotional Stroop tasks.

Language Learning Enhanced by Massive Multiple Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) and the Underlying Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms.

Massive Multiple Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) have increased in popularity among children, juveniles, and adults since MMORPGs' appearance in this digital age. MMORPGs can be applied to enhancing language learning, which is drawing researchers' attention from different fields and many studies have validated MMORPGs' positive effect on language learning. However, there are few studies on the underlying behavioral or neural mechanism of such effect. This paper reviews the educational application of the MMORPGs based on relevant macroscopic and microscopic studies, showing that gamers' overall language proficiency or some specific language skills can be enhanced by real-time online interaction with peers and game narratives or instructions embedded in the MMORPGs. Mechanisms underlying the educational assistant role of MMORPGs in second language learning are discussed from both behavioral and neural perspectives. We suggest that attentional bias makes gamers/learners allocate more cognitive resources toward task-related stimuli in a controlled or an automatic way. Moreover, with a moderating role played by activation of reward circuit, playing the MMORPGs may strengthen or increase functional connectivity from seed regions such as left anterior insular/frontal operculum (AI/FO) and visual word form area to other language-related brain areas.

The neural basis of intergroup threat effect on social attention.

Previous gaze-cuing studies found that intergroup threat is one of the modulators of gaze cuing. These findings indicate that intergroup threat would gate social attention by activating a network resembling that is thought to be involved in drawing or/and holding attention. The present study tested this hypothesis using a gaze-cuing task in which a particular in-group participants observed threatening out-group and nonthreatening out-group gazes, while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. As expected, greater gaze cuing effect only emerged for threatening out-group when the in-group participants only felt inergroup threat from that out-group. Behaviorally, we found intergroup threatening out-group gazes did not draw attention faster than nonthreatening in-group gazes does. However, participants took more time to suppress the influence of the gaze direction of threatening out-group gazes, compared to nonthreatening in-group gazes, in the incongruent condition, which means intergroup threatening gaze holds attention longer than nonthreatening gaze does. Imaging results demonstrated that threatening cues recruited a fronto-parietal network, previously implicated in holding attention and execution functions. Our results, therefore, suggest that the mechanisms underpinning gaze cuing evolved to be sensitive to intergroup threatening stimuli, possibly because it is hard to disengage from such intergroup threatening cues once they are detected.

Romantic Love Is Associated with Enhanced Inhibitory Control in an Emotional Stop-Signal Task.

Purpose: This study explored whether romantic lovers differ in emotion-related inhibitory control capacity from those who are single. Methods: 88 healthy undergraduate college students participated in the study. Half were currently in love and in a romantic relationship (love group, LG), and half were single and had never been in a romantic relationship (single group, SG). Based on duration of romantic relationship (i.e., love duration), the LG were further divided into two subgroups: "early stage love" and "longer periods of love". All participants completed an emotional Stop Signal Task, consisting of a variety of human face stimuli displaying either sad or neutral affect. Results: Results found that relative to SG, lovers showed greater inhibitory control [shorter stop-signal reaction time (SSRT)] during negative emotion condition trials. Furthermore, in early stages of love, SSRT for negative emotion condition trials was significantly shorter compared to that in "longer periods of love" or SG individuals, with no significant differences between the two latter groups. Conclusion: Compared with individuals who were single, early stage lovers showed greater capacity for inhibiting action during presentation of negative emotional stimuli. Within a greater social context, greater inhibitory control capacity during early stages of love may be related to the successful formation of romantic relationships, particularly to the ability to persevere in goal-directed action despite negative emotional contexts such as that of sadness.