Internet gaming disorder (IGD) is becoming a prevalent mental health concern around the world. However, the relationship among brain gray matter volume (GMV), emotion induced by decision-making and the level of reflection in IGD participants has not been fully elucidated to date. The current study aimed to explore this issue by combining a sequential decision task and voxel-based morphometry. Twenty-six IGD participants and 28 demographically matched healthy controls were recruited. After collecting Rumination-Reflection questionnaire data and high-resolution T1-weighted MRI data, participants were asked to complete a sequential decision task. The results demonstrated that compared to healthy controls, IGD participants exhibited significantly decreased GMV in the superior frontal gyrus (SFG). Moreover, GMV in the SFG of IGD participants fully mediated the impact of reflection level on the emotion of loss outcome during the sequential decision task. These results indicate that IGD is associated with reduced GMV in the SFG, and this structural change in IGD contributes to a particular relationship between the level of reflection and regret emotion for loss outcome in the sequential decision task.

互联网游戏障碍（IGD）成为全球范围内普遍存在的心理健康问题。但是，迄今为止，尚未完全阐明脑灰质体积（GMV），决策引起的情绪和IGD参与者反射水平之间的关系。当前的研究旨在通过将顺序决策任务和基于体素的形态计量学相结合来探索这一问题。招募了26位IGD参与者和28位人口统计学匹配的健康对照。收集反光反射问卷数据和高分辨率T1加权MRI数据后，要求参与者完成顺序决策任务。结果表明，与健康对照相比，IGD参与者在上额回（SFG）中的GMV显着降低。而且，IGD参与者的SFG中的GMV完全介导了反射水平对顺序决策任务中损失后果情绪的影响。这些结果表明，IGD与SFG中GMV的降低有关，并且IGD的这种结构变化有助于在顺序决策任务中对损失结果的反思水平和后悔情绪之间的特定关系。