Mental Health Issues: Addictive Behaviours

A set of vocabulary flashcards covering the neurobiology, clinical conceptualization, and empirical studies of behavioral addictions including social networking, gaming, gambling, and compulsive shopping.

Substance Related and Addictive Disorders (DSM-5)

The diagnostic chapter in the DSM-5 that contains substance-related disorders alongside non-substance-related (behavioral) disorders.

Gambling Disorder

The only non-substance-related behavioral condition officially classified and recognized as an addictive disorder in the DSM-5.

Social Networking Sites (SNS) Addiction Disorder

A proposed behavioral addiction characterized by neglect of personal life, mental preoccupation, escapism, mood-modifying experiences, tolerance, and concealing the behavior.

Phantom Vibration Syndrome

The false physical sensation or hallucination that one's mobile phone is vibrating or receiving notifications when it is not.

Highlight Reel

A social media stressor where users post only their best and brightest moments, prompting viewers to struggle with insecurity by comparing their everyday lives to others' curated highlights.

Social Currency

Social media feedback such as likes, shares, and comments that attribute value to content and individuals within the economy of attention, often tying self-worth to quantified metrics.

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)

Social anxiety arising from the apprehension that one is being left out of potential connections, events, or opportunities happening within one's network.

Mesolimbic Dopamine System

The neural pathway central to processing reward and addiction, originating in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and projecting forward to structures such as the nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex.

Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA)

The midbrain structure housing the dopaminergic cell bodies of the mesolimbic dopamine system that activate strongly during rewarding stimuli, such as personalized social media feeds.

Nucleus Accumbens

A subcortical forebrain structure at the terminal end of the mesolimbic pathway that serves as a primary reward center, exhibiting hyperactivation in response to behavioral cues across social media, gaming, gambling, and shopping.

Fareri Study

A neuroimaging study demonstrating that playing a reward card game with a friend elicits significantly higher subjective excitement and greater nucleus accumbens activation than playing with a stranger or a computer.

Meshi Study (Facebook Likes)

An fMRI investigation demonstrating that greater self-reported time spent on Facebook positively correlates with greater nucleus accumbens activation when receiving likes relative to giving likes.

Homeostasis

The physiological balancing process by which the brain reacts to chronic overstimulation by downregulating receptors and altering structure to pull neural activation back toward baseline levels.

Grey Matter Volume Loss

A structural reduction in neuronal cell bodies observed in the nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortical regions in individuals reporting excessive social media use or prolonged gaming duration.

Dopamine D2 Receptor Downregulation

A homeostatic reduction in available dopamine D2 receptor subtypes within the nucleus accumbens caused by chronic dopamine surges, representing neural tolerance in internet, gaming, and substance addictions.

Anterior Cingulate Cortex (in Gaming Addiction)

A cortical brain region associated with processing the negative affect of losing, which exhibits blunted or reduced activation in gaming addicts when they incur losses.

Han Study (Bupropion Treatment)

A clinical trial finding that treating StarCraft addicts with bupropion for six weeks cut cue-induced prefrontal cortical activity in half, reduced cravings, and reduced gameplay time by more than a third.

Joutsa Study (Fruit Machine Dopamine Release)

A PET neuroimaging experiment demonstrating that dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens during an ecologically valid fruit machine task correlates positively with the player's gambling severity score.

Raab Study (Compulsive Shopping)

An fMRI investigation showing that compulsive shoppers exhibit excessive nucleus accumbens activation specifically during the initial presentation of desirable consumer items compared to control participants.