Internet Addicts' Pre-attentional Bias To Internet-Related Picture And Its Neural Mechanism

The theory of Incentive sensitization model consider that addicts get in touch with addiction-related information for a long time, resulting in their nervous system easily affected by addiction-related information, then the attentional bias to addiction-related information came into being. Previous studies on Internet addiction have confirmed that there is an attentional bias in Internet addiction. However, the processing of Internet information is unconscious and automatic, therefore, the research on Internet addiction should not only pay attention on the level of consciousness, also should be explored in the unconscious attention level, whether there are also Internet addiction bias of the network information, namely the existence of preattentional bias. The form of network information is rich and varied, we chose the most important visual image information received by Internet addicts,and carried on the following two studies:In study one, we used a visual point detection masking paradigm to investigate whether the Internet addicts had a preattentional bias on the Internet-related pictures. The experiment selected the Internet addicts and non internet addiction in 15, all participants were asked to detecting the point and make button response. The results showed that there was a difference in the response time of the key response of the subjects under the same experimental conditions or not. When the location of the detection point is consistent with the position of the Internet-related pictures, the response time of the Internet addicts is significantly shorter than that of the two positions, but there is no significant difference between the non addicts. There were differences between groups in the key response of the subjects. When the location of the probe is consistent with the position of the Internet-related pictures, the response time of the Internet addicts is significantly shorter than that of the non addicts, but there is no significant difference between the two positions. This study shows that Internet Addiction exist preattentional bias, according to the cognitive processing model of Franken, this may be due to the Internet addicts contact Internet-related information frequently, the Internet-related information is associated with the memory bias, then it can more automated processing of network information, but also more difficult to transfer the attention from the Internet, which makes the other information is ignored.In study two, the double Block-Oddball paradigm was used to investigate whether the Internet addicts had the attentional bias on the neural network. The same college student in study one participated in this study. The results showed that in the occipital region and the temporal occipital region, the color deviation of the four pictures were induced MMN,but there was a difference between the image type and the test group. For picture type,network addiction group by network photo induced MMN amplitude was significantly higher than that of non network pictures, especially the red Internet-related pictures, and the non network addiction group by Internet-related pictures and non network picture induced MMN amplitude had no significant difference, and MMN of the red Internet-related pictures with maximum amplitude. The difference between the two groups was mainly in three parts. Firstly, the amplitude of MMN induced by red and black Internet-related pictures in the Internet addiction group was significantly higher than that in the non addiction group. Secondly, the MMN amplitude induced by red and black non network images was significantly higher than that of Internet addiction group. The results show that there is a preattentional bias to the Internet-related pictures of Internet addiction, according to the 'incentive sensitization theory', Internet addicts contact network information for a long time, and the happy experience of network is constantly strengthened, characteristics of the network addiction detection of primary visual cortex cells can quickly distinguish the network information and the advantages of processing, to promote the Internet-related information can be through prescreening stage to stage selective attention.The two study shows that Internet addict have preattentional bias to network picture in the behavior and neural responses, in other words, in the preattention stage, Internet addict has the advantages of processing the Internet-related pictures and detecting the feature significantly, which may be related to Internet addiction related brain reward circuits and motivation loop structure and function abnormalities.