RP3: Appetitive extinction deficits and the risk of developing pornography-use disorder and gaming disorder

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Appetitive conditioning and extinction processes are considered to be important components for the development, maintenance, and recovery of addictive behaviors. During the development of an addiction, formerly neutral stimuli are associated with the drug intake or with the addictive behavior through Pavlovian conditioning. The learning and relearning of addiction-related associations can be studied by appetititve conditioning experiments which comprise a conditioning phase, an extinction learning phase and an extinction test phase. During the conditioning phase, one conditioned cue (CS+) is repeatedly paired with a rewarding, unconditioned stimulus (UCS), while another stimulus (CS-) predicts the absence of reward. After a few trials, the CS+ elicits higher conditioned responses than the CS-, such as increased skin conductance or neural responses. This appetitive value of the CS+ is associated with orbitofrontal cortex reactivity towards the stimulus, while the amygdala is often linked to the formation of associations, and the nucleus accumbens is considered to play a pivotal role in reward anticipation. During the process of extinction learning, the CS+ and CS- are repeatedly presented without the UCS, resulting in a decrease in conditioned responses, and finally leads to the result that the CS+ and CS- do not differ significantly at the end of extinction learning. After a certain time interval, the success of extinction learning is probed by means of an extinction test phase.In the present study, the hypothesis is tested whether individuals suffering from risky or pathological pornography-use or from risky or pathological use of games show addiction-specific deficits in extinction learning and extinction test. To date, no experiments addressing extinction processes in the context of pornography use disorder and gaming disorder have been conducted. This comparison is of particular interest because it allows to evaluate the impact of primary and secondary reinforcers.Five groups will be included: individuals with 1) pathological pornography use, 2) risky pornography use, 3) pathological gaming, 4) risky gaming, and 5) unproblematic use of pornography and games. Differences in neural activity will be compared between the groups. During day 1, the appetitive conditioning task and the extinction learning task (both during fMRI) will be conducted. One week later, participants will perform the extinction test. This RP shares common research questions with RP2, RP4, and RP6. While the other RPs mainly focus on responses and processing of the relevant stimulus material, the RP3 extends this view by analyzing the maintenance of these disorders through (disturbed) extinction processes.