title: Reward system and temporal pole contributions to affective evaluation during a first person shooter video game.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Violent content in video games evokes many concerns but there is little research concerning its rewarding aspects. It was demonstrated that playing a video game leads to striatal dopamine release. It is unclear, however, which aspects of the game cause this reward system activation and if violent content contributes to it. We combined functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) with individual affect measures to address the neuronal correlates of violence in a video game.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Thirteen male German volunteers played a first-person shooter game (Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror) during fMRI measurement. We defined success as eliminating opponents, and failure as being eliminated themselves. Affect was measured directly before and after game play using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). Failure and success events evoked increased activity in visual cortex but only failure decreased activity in orbitofrontal cortex and caudate nucleus. A negative correlation between negative affect and responses to failure was evident in the right temporal pole (rTP).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The deactivation of the caudate nucleus during failure is in accordance with its role in reward-prediction error: it occurred whenever subject missed an expected reward (being eliminated rather than eliminating the opponent). We found no indication that violence events were directly rewarding for the players. We addressed subjective evaluations of affect change due to gameplay to study the reward system. Subjects reporting greater negative affect after playing the game had less rTP activity associated with failure. The rTP may therefore be involved in evaluating the failure events in a social context, to regulate the players' mood.
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, RWTH Aachen University, Neuenhofer Weg 21, 52074 Aachen, Germany. kamathiak@ukaachen.de
authors.forename: Krystyna A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Mathiak
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Klasen
authors.forename: René
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Weber
authors.forename: Hermann
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ackermann
authors.forename: Sukhwinder S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Shergill
authors.forename: Klaus
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mathiak
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D012201:Reward; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D018910:Video Games / Q000523:psychology*; D014754:Violence / Q000523:psychology*