{"id":5145,"date":"2014-09-25T21:00:29","date_gmt":"2014-09-26T03:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=5145"},"modified":"2014-09-26T09:07:08","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T15:07:08","slug":"the-jugglers-brain-continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=5145","title":{"rendered":"The juggler’s brain (continued)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jugglersbrain\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A now famous Stanford study<\/a> by Eyal Ophir and Cliff Nass (et al.) found that heavy media multitaskers \u2014 people who\u00a0constantly shift their attention between different\u00a0of streams of information \u2014 have less control over their thoughts and less ability to distinguish important information from unimportant stuff. In a word, heavy multitaskers are\u00a0scatterbrained<\/a>. A new study, “Higher Media Multi-Tasking Activity Is Associated with Smaller Gray-Matter Density in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex,”\u00a0by two neuroscientists\u00a0at the University of Sussex\u2019s Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, may shed light on the biological underpinnings of this mental\u00a0maladroitness. The researchers, Kep Kee Loh and Ryota Kanai, found that heavy multitaskers have\u00a0a compromised\u00a0anterior cingular cortex (ACC), a part of the brain (highlighted in the above images) that plays an important role in the control of thoughts and emotions.<\/p>\n

They summarize\u00a0their findings\u00a0in the abstract<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0the paper:<\/p>\n

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Media multitasking, or the concurrent consumption of multiple media forms, is increasingly prevalent in today\u2019s society and has been associated with negative psychosocial and cognitive impacts. Individuals who engage in heavier media-multitasking are found to perform worse on cognitive control tasks and exhibit more socio-emotional difficulties. However, the neural processes associated with media multitasking remain unexplored. The present study investigated relationships between media multitasking activity and brain structure. Research has demonstrated that brain structure can be altered upon prolonged exposure to novel environments and experience. Thus, we expected differential engagements in media multitasking to correlate with brain structure variability. This was confirmed via Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM) analyses: Individuals with higher Media Multitasking Index (MMI) scores had smaller gray matter density in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Functional connectivity between this ACC region and the precuneus was negatively associated with MMI. Our findings suggest a possible structural correlate for the observed decreased cognitive control performance and socio-emotional regulation in heavy media-multitaskers. While the cross-sectional nature of our study does not allow us to specify the direction of causality, our results brought to light novel associations between individual media multitasking behaviors and ACC structure differences.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Figuring out the “direction of causality” would reveal whether heavy multitasking shrinks\u00a0the ACC\u00a0or whether\u00a0people with less developed\u00a0ACCs are prone to heavy multitasking. Comments<\/a> Kep Kee Loh:\u00a0\u201cThe exact mechanisms of these changes are still unclear.\u00a0Although it is conceivable that individuals with small ACC are more susceptible to multitasking situations due to weaker ability in cognitive control or socio-emotional regulation, it is equally plausible that higher levels of exposure to multitasking situations leads to structural changes in the ACC. A longitudinal study is required to unambiguously\u00a0determine the direction of causation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here’s the entire paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A now famous Stanford study by Eyal Ophir and Cliff Nass (et al.) found that heavy media multitaskers \u2014 people who\u00a0constantly shift their attention between different\u00a0of streams of information \u2014 have less control over their thoughts and less ability to distinguish important information from unimportant stuff. In a word, heavy multitaskers are\u00a0scatterbrained. A new study, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-shallows"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5145"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5156,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145\/revisions\/5156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}