Abstract
Media multitasking, or the concurrent consumption of multiple media forms, is increasingly prevalent in today’s 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 multi-tasking 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.
Highlights
Media multitasking, or the concurrent consumption of multiple media forms, is increasingly prevalent in modern society [1] and has been associated with decreased cognitive control abilities [2] as well as negative psychosocial impacts such as depression and social anxiety [3], negative social well-being [4], and poor academic performance [5]
Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM) analysis revealed a negative association between Media Multitasking Index (MMI) scores and gray matter density in the anterior cingulate cortex (Figure 1; ACC; t(70) = 5.16, PFWE-corrected,.05, Cluster size = 158 voxels 6 1.53 = 533 mm3; peak Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) coordinate: x = 12, y = 41, z = 3)
We suspected that the observed MMI-ACC gray matter association could be confounded by individual differences in extraversion scores
Summary
The concurrent consumption of multiple media forms, is increasingly prevalent in modern society [1] and has been associated with decreased cognitive control abilities [2] as well as negative psychosocial impacts such as depression and social anxiety [3], negative social well-being [4], and poor academic performance [5]. At this juncture, little is known about the neural processes associated with media multi-tasking. Based on the above findings, we hypothesized that differential engagements in media multitasking would likewise reflect differences in regional brain structures
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