Altered functional connectivity in children with depressive tendency and problematic smartphone use
Poster No:
2035
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Seonkyoung Lee1, Yong Jeon Cheong2, Ji Hyeong Ro3, Jihyun Bae4, Minyoung Jung1
Institutions:
1Korea Brain Research Institute, Daegu, Daegu, 2Korea Brain Research Institute, Daegu, NA, 3Korea Brain Research Institute, Daegu, Korea, Republic of, 4KBRI (Korea Brain Research Institude), Daegu, Dong-gu
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
The worldwide trend indicates a gradual decrease in the age at which smartphones are first used. Concurrently, the increasing use of smartphones among children in their developmental stages has brought various potential side effects, such as depression, to the forefront as serious issues. Depression symptoms serve as a key predictor of the risk of smartphone overuse. While many neuroimaging studies predict significant overlap between neurobiological changes caused by depressive tendency and problematic smartphone use, no study has examined them together. In our study, we investigated the common alternations in resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) associated with problematic smartphone use and depressive tendency in normally developing children.
Methods:
Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging were scanned from 74 typically developing children (40 boys, 34 girls, mean age: 10.8 ± 0.8, 10–12 years), all of whom completed the problematic smartphone use (i.e., Smartphone Addiction Scale [S-scale], Smartphone Over-dependence Scale [SO-scale], Smart Media Addictive Tendency Scale [SM-scale]), Children's Depression Inventory 2nd Edition (CDI 2) self-report questionnaires. The institutional boards of the Korea Brain Research Institute granted ethical approval for this study (KBRI-202103-HR-002). Seed-based functional connectivity analyses were performed to examine the association between depressive tendency/problematic smartphone use and rsFC by using the CONN toolbox implemented in MATLAB. Regions where functional/structural alterations have been reported in previous studies related to depression and problematic smartphone use were selected as seeds, including insula, anterior cingulate cortex, lateral prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, fusiform gyrus, and amygdala. Brain maps are thresholded at P< 0.001 voxel-wise and corrected for multiple comparisons using a cluster-wise threshold of p-FDR corrected < 0.05. Conjunction analysis was performed to establish a common rsFC map for depressive tendency and problematic smartphone use. We also conducted mediation analysis to investigate the specific relationships among three variables: rsFC, depressive tendency, and problematic smartphone use. The mediation model jointly tested the following effects: 1) the effect of the rsFC (X) on the problematic smartphone use (M) (path a, indirect effect); 2) the effect of the M on the depressive tendency (Y) (path b, indirect effect); 3) the effect of the X on Y controlling for M (path c', direct effect); 4) the effect of the X-Y relationship without considering the M (path c, indirect effect + direct effect). Mediation analysis was performed using Model 4 of PROCESS software in SPSS 21.
Results:
First, we confirmed the positive association between problematic smartphone use and depressive tendency. As problematic smartphone use and depression scores increased, enhanced rsFC were common observed between the left insula and the right occipital cortex, including the cuneus and the lateral occipital cortex. Mediation analysis showed that problematic smartphone use mediated the relationship between depressive tendency and rsFC, but the direct effect between rsFC and depressive tendency was not significant (path a = .520, p = .000; path b = .534, p = .000; path c' = .035, p > .1; path c = .312, p = .009).
Conclusions:
We observed shared increases in functional connectivity in the insula-occipital cortex with increasing problematic smartphone use and depression scores, possibly reflecting increased visual processing of salient stimuli. Our mediation analysis showed that increased insula-occipital rsFC was associated with higher scores of depressive tendencies, but crucially, problematic smartphone use mediated this relationship. Taken together, enhanced connectivity between the insula-occipital cortex is strongly associated with smartphone dependence, which in turn can lead to increased depression symptoms.
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Psychiatric (eg. Depression, Anxiety, Schizophrenia) 2
Lifespan Development:
Early life, Adolescence, Aging
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Task-Independent and Resting-State Analysis 1
Keywords:
Addictions
Development
FUNCTIONAL MRI
MRI
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
Baker, T. B., Piper, M. E., McCarthy, D. E., Majeskie, M. R., & Fiore, M. C. (2004). Addiction motivation reformulated: an affective processing model of negative reinforcement. Psychological review, vol. 111, no. 1, p. 33-51.
Elhai, J. D., Levine, J. C., Dvorak, R. D., & Hall, B. J. (2017). Non-social features of smartphone use are most related to depression, anxiety and problematic smartphone use. Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 69, pp. 75-82.
Hayes, A. F. (2012). PROCESS: A versatile computational tool for observed variable mediation, moderation, and conditional process modeling.
Horvath, J., Mundinger, C., Schmitgen, M. M., Wolf, N. D., Sambataro, F., Hirjak, D., ... & Wolf, R. C. (2020). Structural and functional correlates of smartphone addiction. Addictive behaviors, vol. 105, 106334.
Ko, M., Chi, S. H., Lee, J. H., Suh, S. I., & Lee, M. S. (2023). Altered Functional Connectivity of the Nucleus Accumbens and Amygdala in Cyber Addiction: A Resting State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study. Clinical Psychopharmacology and Neuroscience, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 304-312.
Manoliu, A., Meng, C., Brandl, F., Doll, A., Tahmasian, M., Scherr, M., ... & Sorg, C. (2014). Insular dysfunction within the salience network is associated with severity of symptoms and aberrant inter-network connectivity in major depressive disorder. Frontiers in human neuroscience, vol. 7, 930.
Pastrnak, M., Simkova, E., & Novak, T. (2021). Insula activity in resting-state differentiates bipolar from unipolar depression: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Scientific reports, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 16930.
Rashid, A. A., Suppiah, S., Nasser, N. S., Sharifat, H., Mohamad, M., Loh, J. L., ... & Hoo, F. K. (2021). The neurobiology of smartphone addiction in emerging adults evaluated using brain morphometry and resting-state functional MRI. Neuroscience Research Notes, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 19-28.
Shi, X., Wang, A., & Zhu, Y. (2023). Longitudinal associations among smartphone addiction, loneliness, and depressive symptoms in college students: Disentangling between–And within–person associations. Addictive Behaviors, vol. 142, 107676.