The Alteration of Rich Club in Brain Functional Network in Internet Gaming Disorder

Internet gaming disorder (IGD) has a great negative impact on teenagers’ study and life. It has been included in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 2013. However, the neural mechanism of its effect is yet to be unveiled. In this study, we used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (resting-state fMRI) to explore the differences of rich club structures in the functional brain networks of 30 IGD subjects and 30 age/sex-matched healthy controls. The rich club was found in both IGD subjects and healthy controls, involving important brain regions in default mode, executive control, salience, sensorimotor, auditory and visual networks. IGD subjects had significantly higher rich club connection and higher degree in the right pars orbitalis of inferior frontal gyrus than healthy controls. These findings might suggest that IGD might be more correlated with damage to the rich club connection.