Enhanced reward sensitivity and decreased loss sensitivity in Internet addicts: an fMRI study during a guessing task

Abstract

As the world's fastest growing "addiction", Internet addiction should be studied to unravel the potential heterogeneity. The present study is set to examine reward and punishment processing in Internet addicts as compared to healthy controls while they subjectively experience monetary gain and loss during the performance of a guessing task. The results showed that Internet addicts associated with increased activation in orbitofrontal cortex in gain trials and decreased anterior cingulate activation in loss trials than normal controls. The results suggested that Internet addicts have enhanced reward sensitivity and decreased loss sensitivity than normal comparisons.