A review of recent studies looking at the effects of problematic
internet use have revealed some interesting findings. Internet
addiction is usually defined as the inability to control use of
the Internet, eventually causing psychological, social, and work
difficulties. It is commonly associated with depression, anger
problems and anxiety. But what other effects have studies of the
brain revealed? Positron emission tomography (PET) The brain
regions identified are typically related to impulse control
disorders such as gambling and drug addiction. Other areas of
the brains such as reward processing have frequently been found
to be affected in these studies. It appears that Internet
Addiction shares many of the psychological and neural mechanisms
of drug addiction. These studies showed less efficiency in
information processing and lower cognitive control with evidence
of longer reaction time and impaired executive control. This
means that the parts of the brain associated with planning, goal
completion and orga