Cue reactivity in gaming disorder and pornography-use disorder: The role of ventral and dorsal striatum
Creators: name: Antons, Stephanie
name: Diers, Martin
name: Mallon, Lukas
name: Buesche, Kjell
name: Wolf, Oliver
name: Brand, Matthias
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Clinical Psychology
subject: Life Sciences
subject: Biological Psychology
subject: Cognitive Psychology
subject: Neuroscience and Neurobiology
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology
subject: Addiction
subject: Craving
subject: Cue Reactivity
subject: Disorder
subject: fMRI
subject: Gaming
subject: Internet
subject: Pathological Use
subject: Pornography
subject: Risky Use
subject: Stress

description: Cue reactivity and craving are core concepts in research on substance use disorders and addictive behaviors. Deficits in executive functions and decision making have also been considered as playing an important role in addictive behaviors. The association between acute stress and addictive behaviors may be moderated by executive functions. Gaming disorder has been included in the ICD-11 as a disorder due to addictive behaviors. Pornography use disorder may be considered as a subcomponent of compulsive sexual behavior disorder, which has been included in the ICD-11. Many authors, however, rather see parallels between the specific problems in controlling the use of pornography and addictive behaviors, suggesting that pornography use disorder may be considered as subtype of Internet use disorders, comparable to gaming disorder. Neuroimaging studies on cue reactivity and craving in gaming disorder and pornography use disorder have shown activities in the ventral striatum and further structures involved in fronto-striatal loops. To date, there are no studies which systematically examined neural and behavioral correlates of cue reactivity and craving in gaming disorder compared to pornography use disorder. It is important to address this contrast given that pornography-related stimuli may be considered as natural rewards, compared to gaming-related stimuli, which may be considered as secondary reinforcers. This project aims at investigating 1) behavioral and neural correlates of cue reactivity and craving in gaming disorder compared to pornography use disorder, 2) the effects of acute stress on cue reactivity and craving, and 3) interactions between cue reactivity and craving, acute stress, and measures of executive functions and inhibitory control. The project will include five groups (each with 52 male participants): individuals with 1) gaming disorder, 2) risky use of games, 3) pornography use disorder, 4) risky use of pornography, and 5) control participants, who use both games and pornography non-problematically. The study will consist of three parts. At t1, the intensive diagnostics will be conducted. In the second part of t1, participants will be randomly assigned to either the stress condition of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) or the control group and will perform a cue reactivity paradigm and a decision-making task with addiction-related pictures. At t2, the fMRI experiment (with 34 participants of each group) with a modified cue reactivity paradigm will be conducted.