Impulse control differentiates Internet gaming disorder from non-disordered but heavy Internet gaming use: Evidence from multiple behavioral and multimodal neuroimaging data

Billions of people play Internet games and some of them may develop Internet gaming disorder (IGD), yet the differences between IGD and non-disordered but heavy Internet gaming use behavior remain unclear. We used multiple behaviors and multimodal functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the specificity of impulse control to differentiate IGD from non-disordered but heavy Internet gaming use. One hundred sixty subjects, including patients with IGD (PIGD), non-disordered but heavy Internet gaming participants (NIGP), and healthy controls rated Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, and 141 out of them completed delay-discounting task and resting-state during fMRI. The PIGD but not the NIGP showed altered impulsiveness and delay discounting behavior as compared to healthy controls. Moreover, the PIGD but not the NIGP showed altered activity pattern in the frontoparietal network as compared to healthy controls. The PIGD but not the NIGP showed altered functional connectivity in the frontoparietal network during delay discounting and resting-state as compared to healthy controls. Furthermore, impulse control-related behavioral and fMRI measures significantly classified PIGD from NIGP. This study provides consistent evidence supporting the specificity of impulse control for distinguishing IGD from non-disordered but heavy Internet gaming use.