Media Neuroscience Lab

Video game addiction in teens likely stems from preexisting mental health issues A new study out of UCSB's Media Neuroscience Lab indicates that gaming disorder (AKA video game addiction) likely develops from a player's preexisting mental health conditions.

🎮 New study: Teen gaming addiction may stem more from pre-existing mental health issues (like anxiety & depression) than from video games themselves.

It is not just about the joystick, but it’s about what’s going on in the mind. 🧠
Read more: news.ucsb.edu/2025/022004/... #commsky #psychsci #gaming

Psychopathology and Gaming Disorder in Adolescents This cohort study uses data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study to examine directional longitudinal associations between psychopathology and gaming disorder among adolescents.

Read the article here: ja.ma/4o9EM1N

“Why is my teen addicted to video games?”
Our new study in JAMA Network Open shows that psychopathology is a key driver--not an outcome of gaming disorder!
Depression, anxiety, ADHD, and social challenges may underlie gaming disorder.
Treat the root, not just the game. 🎮🧠
#commsky #psychsci #gaming

This study looked at behavioral data from the ABCD study dataset. A closer look at specific reward dynamics in video game content and at the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms will follow! Big kudos to Kylie Falcione (@kyliewoodman.bsky.social) for her heroic efforts in this project!

In this cohort study of 4289 adolescents, we found that higher baseline levels of psychopathology were significantly associated with an increased risk of developing gaming disorder later, but gaming disorder was not associated with worsening psychopathology.

Psychopathology and Gaming Disorder in Adolescents This cohort study uses data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study to examine directional longitudinal associations between psychopathology and gaming disorder among adolescents.

Very excited to share our latest article on Psychopathology and Gaming Disorder in Adolescents published in JAMA Network Open (ja.ma/4o9EM1N).

Did you meet the media neuroscience lab at #ica25 ?
@b-wheeler.bsky.social
@musamalik.bsky.social
@kyliewoodman.bsky.social

Drop a like or comment who you met and we will give you a follow!

P.S. All three of these brilliant researchers are going on the job market this year!

🎉 Congratulations to former lab member Dr. Sungbin Youk on winning a Top Paper award at @icacsab.bsky.social!

His research used multifaceted analytic approaches to explore how brain activity can help us understand and predict donation behaviors in response to Singapore PSA videos #ica25

Doing or planning digital platform research? We want to hear from you. Take our 5–8 min survey to help shape tools, infrastructure & training for researchers.
🔗 tiny.cc/aio-survey #AIO2025survey

🎉 Congratulations to @fhopp.bsky.social on winning @icacsab.bsky.social’s Rising Star Award!

Dr. Hopp, PI of the Moral Computing Lab at ZPID and former MNL member, continues to shape the field through rigorous and high-quality science. We’re so proud!

ICYMI: 🏆 Congratulations to the winners of Saturday's #ICA25 posters! 🏆 Yoo Joo Lee (Washington State U) won the Top Poster award, and Brittany Wheeler (U of California, Santa Barbara) received the Top Student Poster award!

We hope you had the opportunity to swing by and see @b-wheeler.bsky.social 's TOP STUDENT POSTER!
If you didn't get to see it check out the poster below ⬇️⬇️

Congratulations @len-s.bsky.social ! 🎉

Swing by @b-wheeler.bsky.social poster session at 1:30 to snag one of our exclusive MNL 3D printed brain keychain. 🧠
She is also on the job market this year 👀👀
#ica25

Excited to present at #ICA25 Today!

🗓 1:30pm | Poster #70 | Centennial Foyer (Regency)

“Is Academic Online Bullying a Widespread Phenomenon? A Study of Scholarly Discourse on Twitter/X”

If you're attending, stop by to discuss our findings...and pick up a fun brain keychain while you're there! 🧠

One final presentation to go at #ICA25! @b-wheeler.bsky.social will be sharing our emerging research on online hate and bullying!

We’re always amazed at the impact you can make in just 3 minutes. Thank you to CSAB for hosting an incredible showcase of groundbreaking work. All the presenters inspired us. A special shoutout to @musamalik.bsky.social for his standout paper on global morality! #ica25

Huge thanks to everyone who joined @musamalik.bsky.social’s presentation this morning! 🌟 Grateful for such an engaged audience! #ica25

Truly, is there anything @musamalik.bsky.social can’t do?
If you haven’t had the chance to hear Musa share his research, you’re in for a treat. Catch him tomorrow at #ica25 , first at 9am in the Aspen Ballroom, then again at 12pm in the Mt. Blue Sky room.
(He is also on the job market this year 👀)

Jacob leading a GitHub breakout session

Kylie leading an fMRI analysis breakout session

We’re thrilled to see MNL represented at @hackingcommsci.bsky.social!
Huge thanks to @jacobtfisher.online and @kyliewoodman.bsky.social for organizing another fantastic hackathon and sharing valuable comm sci insights such as using GitHub and running fMRI analyses.
#hackica25 #ica25

We can't wait to kick off #ica25 in Denver!

What are your most recommended talks? #commsky

We will try to attend as many as we can!

These papers and tools are a concerted effort of an amazing group of people I (Rene) had the pleasure to work with. A special thank you to all co-authors and extra kudos to @musamalik.bsky.social who spearheaded our eMACD work, very well done! Now, onwards to some new ideas in this area, stay tuned!

The extended Moral Foundations Dictionary (eMFD): Development and applications of a crowd-sourced approach to extracting moral intuitions from text - Behavior Research Methods Moral intuitions are a central motivator in human behavior. Recent work highlights the importance of moral intuitions for understanding a wide range of issues ranging from online radicalization to vaccine hesitancy. Extracting and analyzing moral content in messages, narratives, and other forms of public discourse is a critical step toward understanding how the psychological influence of moral judgments unfolds at a global scale. Extant approaches for extracting moral content are limited in their ability to capture the intuitive nature of moral sensibilities, constraining their usefulness for understanding and predicting human moral behavior. Here we introduce the extended Moral Foundations Dictionary (eMFD), a dictionary-based tool for extracting moral content from textual corpora. The eMFD, unlike previous methods, is constructed from text annotations generated by a large sample of human coders. We demonstrate that the eMFD outperforms existing approaches in a variety of domains. We anticipate that the eMFD will contribute to advance the study of moral intuitions and their influence on social, psychological, and communicative processes.

Our earlier companion paper with MFT as focus, the extended Moral Foundations Dictionary (eMFD) can be found here: psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.3758/.... The score tools (eMFDscore and eMACscore) you can use for your own mining morality projects are available on Github (links are available in the papers).

Most previous moral mining research has been informed by Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). Here, we develop and evaluate an alternative moral mining tool based on the theory of Morality as Cooperation (MAC), using crowd-sourced annotations and MoNA! mona.mnl.ucsb.edu.

The Extended Morality as Cooperation Dictionary (eMACD): A Crowd-Sourced Approach via the Moral Narrative Analyzer Platform What is the prevalence of moral themes in textual corpora? Most previous moral mining research has been informed by Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). Here, we develop and evaluate an alternative mora...

Finally, it is published 😀 open access: The Extended Morality as Cooperation Dictionary (eMACD): A Crowd-Sourced Approach via the Moral Narrative Analyzer Platform www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....

Dr. Huskey is always making us proud as a MNL alum. Congratulations on another successful #CommHorizons2025
So many amazing scholars and presentations. We look forward to next year!

@kyliewoodman.bsky.social did a phenomenal job of representing our lab's research on media and well-being at #CommHorizons2025

Very cool research!

Already looking forward to next year #SANS2026

Come to sunny San Diego, April 14-20, 2026, for #SANS2026!