Differences in EEG Microstate Induced by Gaming: A Comparison Between the Gaming Disorder Individual, Recreational Game Users and Healthy Controls

Excessive gaming can lead to gaming disorder, which affects the function and structure of the brain. In order to diagnose gaming disorders, it is of importance to understand how gaming behavior affects brain activity patterns and whether there exist differences in the effects on different individuals. Electroencephalogram (EEG) microstate reflects a transiently stable brain topological structure with spatiotemporal characteristics, and the spatial characteristic microstate classes and temporal parameters provide insight into the brain’s functional activities in gaming disorders. In order to explore the feasibility of using EEG microstate parameters as markers of gaming addiction, in the present study, resting-state EEG data were acquired before and after playing video game for 30 minutes from 38 participants, containing gaming disorder individual (GD), recreational game users (RGU), and healthy controls (HC). Our study compared the microstate parameters before and after playing game among three groups. According to the results, the resting-state EEG microstate parameters exert no significant difference before playing game among three groups. However, we found significant difference in microstate B and D parameters among three groups after playing game. Additionally, compared with the pre-gaming, the post-gaming data showed that the variation trend of microstate B and D parameters of the three groups was similar. Moreover, these discoveries provide the first causal evidence of a microstate modification following gaming behavior interference, suggesting that microstates B and D are closely associated with gaming behavior, which can be used as EEG markers for distinguishing gaming addiction.