Relationship between media multitasking and functional connectivity in the dorsal attention network

Kei Kobayashi,Toshiya Murai,Naoya Oishi,Tsukasa Ueno,Sayaka Yoshimura,Takashi Miyagi,Hironobu Fujiwara

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-75091-9

Kei Kobayashi, Toshiya Murai + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75091-9

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Abstract

With the development of digital technology, media multitasking behaviour, which is using two or more media simultaneously, has become more commonplace. There are two opposing hypotheses of media multitasking with regard to its impact on attention. One hypothesis claims that media multitasking can strengthen attention control, and the other claims heavy media multitaskers are less able to focus on relevant tasks in the presence of distractors. A total of 103 healthy subjects took part in this study. We measured the Media Multitasking Index (MMI) and subjects performed the continuous performance test. Resting state and oddball task functional MRI were conducted to analyse functional connectivity in the dorsal attention network, and the degree centrality (DC) was calculated using graph theory analysis. We found that the DCs in the dorsal attention network were higher during resting state than during the oddball task. Furthermore, the DCs during the task were positively correlated with the MMI. These results indicated that the DC reduction from resting state to the oddball task in high media multitaskers was attenuated compared with low media multitaskers. This study not only reveals more about the neurophysiology of media multitasking, but could also indicate brain biomarkers of media multitasking behaviour.

Highlights

With the development of digital technology, media multitasking behaviour, which is using two or more media simultaneously, has become more commonplace
The scattered attention hypothesis claims that long-term media multitasking weakens attention control; that is, individuals who have been exposed to a multitasking lifestyle are less able to maintain focus on relevant tasks in the presence of distractors[3]
As supplementary analyses, we investigated the ventral attention network (VAN), salience network (SN), and frontoparietal network (FPN), which are all known to be related to a ttention[20,21]

Summary

Introduction

With the development of digital technology, media multitasking behaviour, which is using two or more media simultaneously, has become more commonplace. One hypothesis claims that media multitasking can strengthen attention control, and the other claims heavy media multitaskers are less able to focus on relevant tasks in the presence of distractors. The DCs during the task were positively correlated with the MMI These results indicated that the DC reduction from resting state to the oddball task in high media multitaskers was attenuated compared with low media multitaskers. Considering that media multitasking behaviour generally involves continual switching of attention between multiple media sources, these studies have investigated the impact of a multitasking lifestyle on multitasking ability itself. Some studies have reported that there is a greater processing cost of switching between task sets in heavy media m ultitaskers[3,7], which supports the scattered attention hypothesis. That the degree of media multitasking was associated with a better task switching performance[4], which supports the trained attention hypothesis

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