Professor Min Zhao and TCCI-affiliated investigator Tifei Yuan from Shanghai Mental Health Center, Shanghai Jiaotong University, recently co-authored a paper titled “The Structure and Individual Patterns of Trait Impulsivity Across Addiction Disorders: a Network Analysis,” published in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction.
The study engaged 1,687 subjects with neuroactive substance and heroin use disorders and internet gaming disorder (IGD). Trait impulsivity networks were constructed for each of the three groups based on the Barratt Impulsivity Scale-11 (BIS-11C, Chinese version). Individual differential impulsivity networks (IDINs) were also constructed for each addict based on age- and gender-matched health controls for each group.
The results of this study suggest that there are different core impulse profiles for different addiction types, and heterogeneity in individual characteristic impulse patterns which correlate with individual subject demographics and addiction history. The results may be applied in the future to individualized impulse management systems for addicted patients to optimize their treatments. In addition, the differential network approach used in this paper provides a new way of thinking about the construction of individualized symptom networks based on cross-sectional data.
