| The COVID-19 pandemic poses a serious threat not only to human physical health but also to mental health.During the pandemic,the prevalence of a variety of mental disorders has increased,including depression and Internet gaming disorder(IGD).Endophenotypes can help us have a deeper understanding of the pathogenesis of mental disorders,predict high-risk groups of mental disorders and take better intervention measures to prevent such high-risk groups from developing more severe psychological problems under the influence of the pandemic.Therefore,we conducted endophenotype-related research on the two types of high-risk mental disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic,depression and Internet gaming disorder,and provided directions for the prevention and treatment of these two types of mental disorders during the pandemic.Nonclinical depressed people,who are at high risk of depression,are widely distributed around the world and more likely to develop a more severe degree of depression during the COVID-19 pandemic.Therefore,it is important to investigate how the depressive degree changes during the COVID-19 pandemic in nonclinical depressed people.Previous studies have shown that cognitive biases can serve as endophenotypes of depression and predict future depression degrees.Therefore,in the first part of our study,we used behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI)analysis to explore whether and how the COVID-19 pandemic affects the relationship between current cognitive biases and future depression degrees in nonclinical depressed people.We measured current depression degrees cognitive biases,brain responses to emotional faces,and future depression degrees in nonclinical depressed subjects as well as in healthy subjects.The future depression degrees were assessed three months after the experiment.Some nonclinical depressed subjects’future depression degrees were assessed during the pandemic,and the rest were assessed before the pandemic.The results showed that a more negative memory bias was associated with a greater decrease in future depression degree in nonclinical depressed participants during the COVID-19 pandemic,which might be due to social distancing.These data enhance our understanding of how the depressive degree of nonclinical depressed populations will change during the COVID-19 pandemic and also provide support for social distancing policies from a psychological perspective.Although the social distancing policy during the pandemic is beneficial to the relief of depression in non-clinically depressed people with higher negative memory bias.But on the whole,psychological problems such as depression are still prevalent during the pandemic.People began to spend more time on Internet games to alleviate the various negative emotions caused by the pandemic.This makes it easier for people at high risk of IGD to become addicted to Internet games during the pandemic.To aid in the identification of people at high risk of IGD,we explored the underlying endophenotypes of IGD in the second part of our study.We collected resting-state fMRI data of IGD subjects,excessive internet game users,and healthy controls,as well as their behavioral data in the delay discounting task and the Iowa gambling task,and performed brain network analysis and modeling analysis.The findings suggest that the hubness of the right orbital superior frontal gyrus may serve as a potential endophenotype of IGD,and the hubness of this brain region is related to impulsivity in the decision-making process.This finding enables us to have a deeper understanding of the addiction mechanism of IGD,provides a potential target for the treatment of IGD,and also helps to identify the high-risk population of IGD.The findings in this article not only help us have a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of depression and IGD,but also has reference significance for the prevention and treatment of psychological problems during the pandemic and help us better deal with the threat of the pandemic to the public’s mental health. |
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