5th Edition of Addiction World Conference 2026

Abstract

Negative Emotions Activate Game-Related Semantic Concepts in Individuals with Gaming Disorder: An fMRI Study: Existing literature suggests a significant comorbidity between gaming disorder and negative emotions such as depression and anxiety. It remains to be empirically established whether this association indicates the development of a pathological associative learning pattern among individuals with GD, characterized by a propensity to cope with negative emotions through excessive gaming behaviors. To address this issue, the present study utilized the priming Stroop color-naming task following exposure to positive and negative affect primes to compare the neural responses of individuals with GD and recreational game users (RGU) to gaming-related and non-gaming-related words. The results showed that under the contrast condition between gaming and no-gaming target word where the negative priming preceded, individuals with GD displayed a significant attenuation in the functional connectivity between the right caudate and the right putamen, as well as between the right caudate and the right insula, in comparison to RGU. Moreover, the connectivity between the right caudate and the right insula was found to mediate the relationship between group affiliation (GD vs. RGU) and attentional bias toward gaming stimuli under negative priming conditions. These results suggested that negative emotions could precipitate a dysregulation within the goal-directed and habitual systems of individuals with GD, potentially leading to an attentional bias toward gaming under negative emotional states. This neural evidence supports the hypothesis that individuals with GD may have developed a habitual reliance on gaming as a coping mechanism for negative emotions.