EEG response to game-craving according to personal preference for games

Recently, the World Health Organization included ‘gaming disorder’ in its latest revision of the international classification of diseases (ICD-11). Despite extensive research on internet gaming disorder (IGD), few studies have addressed game-related stimuli eliciting craving, which plays an important role in addiction. Particularly, most previous studies did not consider personal preferences in games presented to subjects as stimuli. In this study, we compared neurophysiological responses elicited for favorite game (FG) videos and non-favorite game (NFG) videos. We aimed to demonstrate neurophysiological characteristics according to the game preference in the IGD group. We measured participants’ electroencephalogram (EEG) while they watched FG, NFG and neutral videos. For FG videos, the parieto-occipital theta power (TP(PO)) were significantly increased compared with those for NFG videos (P < 0.05, paired t-test). TP(PO) also differed significantly between the healthy control and IGD groups only on FG videos controlling covariate (TP(PO) on neutral videos) (P < 0.05, analysis of covariance [ANCOVA]). And TP(PO) was significantly correlated to self-reported craving score only on FG videos (r = 0.334, P < 0.05). In the present study, we demonstrate that FG videos induce higher TP(PO) than that induced by NFG videos in the IGD group and TP(PO) is a reliable EEG feature associated with craving for gaming.