Disrupted inter-hemispheric functional and structural coupling in Internet addiction adolescents (2015)

2015 Sep 12. pii: S0925-4927(15)30070-6. doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2015.08.012. [Epub ahead of print]

Bi Y1, Yuan K2, Feng D1, Xing L1, Li Y1, Wang H3, Yu D4, Xue T5, Jin C6, Qin W1, Tian J7.

Abstract

Rapid progress had been made towards the effect of Internet addiction (IA) on the adolescents brain, relatively little is known about the alterations in inter-hemispheric resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) changes. In the current study, voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity (VMHC) was used to examine inter-hemispheric RSFC in IA adolescents (n=21) and controls (n=21). The integrity of the fibers connecting the regions, which showed aberrant inter-hemispheric functional connectivity, was assessed by fiber tractography analysis. In addition, the coupling of inter-hemispheric functional and structural connectivity was investigated. Relative to controls, IA adolescents showed decreased VMHC of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and reduced fractional anisotropy (FA) values in the genu of corpus callosum (CC). The decreased VMHC of DLPFC was significantly negative correlated with the duration of IA. Moreover, the VMHC of DLPFC showed significant correlations with the FA of CC in healthy controls, which was disrupted in IA. Our findings provided more scientific evidence for the involvement of DLPFC in IA. It is hoped that multimodal imaging methods can provide deeper insights into the IA effects on the brain.

KEYWORDS:

Corpus callosum; Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; Fractional anisotropy; Internet addiction; Voxel-mirrored homotopic connectivity