Wired
I often hold my phone or tablet uncontrollably, swipe Weibo aimlessly, browse Taobao…
If there is, then you need to be aware that this uncontrollable Internet addiction is a health problem called Internet Use Disorder (IUD), and this problem can affect your ability to speak.
Internet use disorder, specifically, is the frequent uncontrolled browsing of the Internet, but the browsing information is not directed, just out of an uncontrollable habitual action.
A recent medical study, published in the academic journal PLOS ONE, shows that Internet use disorders affect the brain, altering the structure of regions of the brain that control the language system.
Simply put, it is:
Too many Weibo swipes make it difficult to speak.
I was so frightened that I quickly put down the phone in my hand.
Experiment on 60 volunteers
The research results come from an academic team at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Pecs, Hungary.
The team’s latest experiments show that Internet use disorder (IUD) causes changes in the structure of the language region of the brain, which in turn affects the ability to speak.
The experiment was designed like this:
The Internet use questionnaire (PIUQ) was used to index the degree of Internet addiction among 60 subjects, and then all participants were subjected to language experiments, and MRI scans of the subjects’ brains were performed in the process.
In the process, a correlation between Internet use disorder and changes in brain structure was derived.
The entire experiment was paid to recruit 60 volunteers, aged 18-30 years old, half male and half male. Also, make sure that all volunteers are ignorant of the purpose of the experiment.
In this experiment, the research team used a total of 2 experimental tools:
The first is the design of the Internet use questionnaire.
The questionnaire consists of 18 items in 3 major parts, including obsessive-compulsive disorder (obsessed), neglect disorder and control disorder. There are 6 questions in each of the 3 major components, which respectively measure the obsession of the respondents to the Internet and the lack of real life due to Internet access. level, and self-control.
All questions were answered on a five-point Likert scale, and different answers were compared and scored. The higher the score, the higher the degree of addiction.
In addition, the questionnaire also introduced two subjective questions, and assessed psychological factors such as personal depression and anxiety that affect the online behavior of the experimental subjects.
The specific scores and questionnaire details are as follows:
The second is the language experiment.
The experimental team did not use the semantic experiment of the verbal fluency task commonly used in similar experiments, but conducted it with the phonemic experiment.
The so-called verbal fluency task is a common tool for evaluating language performance, including lexical knowledge, lexical retrieval ability, and executive control, usually including semantic and phonemic components. The difference between the two is that semantics requires the experimenter to say category-related words, and phonemic requires the experimenter to say words that begin with a specific letter.
As for the reason, the research team believes that the phoneme experiment can better reflect the behavioral control ability and the activation of the frontal lobe, and the above two factors can better reflect the connection between Internet use disorders and brain structure.
The specific language experimental design included 7 cycles of 30-second long rest and 30-second active periods.
During the activity period, the experimenter needs to use S, K, E, T, L, A, N as the initial letters in sequence to speak as many Hungarian words as possible within 7 cycles.
Internet Addiction Really Affects Speech
Next is the experimental results. The study shows that the correlation between Internet questionnaire scores and brain BOLD fMRI is as follows:
The subscales of the Internet use questionnaire were inversely associated with inactivation of the bilateral precuneus, bilateral cingulate (PCC), left subcallosal cortex, and left orbitofrontal cortex of the brain when the language experiment was conducted.
Total questionnaire scores were negatively correlated with inactivation of the bilateral precuneus and bilateral PCC, and subjective question 2 scores were negatively correlated with inactivation of the right thalamus, right parahippocampal gyrus, and right bilateral cingulate gyrus.
Subjective question 1 did not show a clear correlation.
In the Broca’s area of the brain, which is closely related to human language ability, experiments have found that there is a negative correlation between the neglected component of PIUQ and the PPI of the left occipital pole, left lateral occipital cortex (LOC), and left occipital cortex.
PIUQ fascination was negatively correlated with PPI in the left LOC, left intracortical Arkansas, and caudate nucleus, while total PIUQ was also negatively correlated with left caudate nucleus, LOC, and left intracortical Arkansas.
The problem rate (Q1), which indicates the subjective degree of addiction, was negatively correlated with the PPI of the left occipital pole, LOC, occipital gyrus, middle frontal gyrus, and anterior ventral gyrus.
That said, experimental data confirm that Internet use disorder (IUD) reduces speaking fluency.
However, the authors of the paper also explained in the study that the mechanism of IUD’s change in language ability is in the process of language processing and cognitive control, or is it caused by the decline of general cognitive ability.
However, the mechanism by which IUD negatively affects personal language fluency may be due to altered two nervous systems:
One is DMN, the default network of the brain, which is closely related to the brain’s consciousness, emotions, and episodic memory.
Another is the interdependence of signaling between Broca’s area and occipital area.
While conclusions about the brain’s mechanism of action are still in the “possible” stage, one thing is certain:
Playing with mobile phones and tablets should be self-control, otherwise it will be unreasonable to say the truth. (manual dog head)
About the author of the paper
Darnai Gergely, the first author and corresponding author of the paper, is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pécs, Hungary. His main research fields include brain science, neurology, and psychology.
Specific resume:
In 2011, he obtained a master’s degree from the University of Pecs, his main research areas are cognitive neuroscience, psychology, neuropsychology, etc.;
In 2016, he obtained a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Pecs;
After graduating from Ph.D., he stayed in school to engage in research work.
Reference link:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0269979#