ArticleFrontiers in psychiatry2026
Internet addiction is associated with differences in static and dynamic hippocampal functional connectivity in young adults: the mediating role of emotion regulation difficulties.
Article in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Internet addiction (IA) has emerged as a pervasive public health issue among young adults, frequently accompanied by severe emotion regulation difficulties. However, the precise static and dynamic functional architecture of the hippocampus and its interplay with emotion dysregulation in IA remain incompletely understood. Methods: This study enrolled 45 young adults with IA and 29 healthy controls (HC). Utilizing resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we computed both static functional connectivity (sFC) and dynamic functional connectivity (dFC) seeded from the rostral hippocampus. Partial correlation analyses were conducted to examine the associations between aberrant connectivity and clinical symptoms. Furthermore, we investigated whether emotion dysregulation mediates the relationship between altered hippocampal connectivity and internet addiction severity. Results: Compared to HCs, individuals with IA exhibited significantly increased sFC between the left rostral hippocampus and nodes of the default mode network (DMN; precuneus and inferior parietal lobule). Furthermore, the IA group displayed heightened temporal variability between the bilateral hippocampus and visual-temporal regions (superior temporal pole, lingual gyrus, middle, and superior occipital gyri). These aberrant sFC and dFC were significantly and positively correlated with IA severity and emotion regulation difficulties. Mediation analyses further revealed that emotion dysregulation significantly and partially mediated the relationship between altered hippocampal connectivity and internet addiction severity. Conclusions: Static hyper-connectivity with the DMN and dynamic instability with visual-temporal networks constitute distinct neurobiological signatures of IA. Crucially, emotion dysregulation bridges these hippocampal network anomalies with addictive behaviors, highlighting targeted emotion regulation interventions as a promising therapeutic strategy for internet addiction.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.