Content uploaded by Giuseppe R. Brera
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Giuseppe R. Brera on Nov 01, 2019
Content may be subject to copyright.
Adolescentologia
Giornale Italiano di Adolescentologia e medicina dell’adolescenza
Giornale di cultura scientifica ed educativa per la salute dell’adolescente
:
Fondato nel 1992 da Giuseppe R.Brera
Direttore responsabile Giuseppe R.Brera
Direttore editoriale Vito Galante
Comitato scientifico e di redazione
Luciano Berti, Giuseppe R. Brera, Vito Galante, Luigi Gargantini, Patrizia Marchetti, Vincenzo Ovallesco, Mariangela Porta,
Assunto Quadrio, Ettore Ruberti
Organo del Dipartimento di Adolescentologia dell’Università Ambrosiana e
della Società Italiana di Adolescentologia e Medicina dell’Adolescenza
e della World Federation and Society of Adolescentology (WFSA-Italia)
www.adolescentologia.it
www.unambro.it
Nuova Serie-Edizione trimestrale dell’Università Ambrosiana, Milano -
Abbonamenti: 100 euro-4 numeri- gratuito per i soci- Scuole 1 euro/ studente con licenza distribuzione-
Numeri Speciali 50 euro richiedere abbonamento a dipedit@unambro.it
Autorizzazione del Tribunale di Milano n° 374- 1992
Giornale Italiano di Adolescentologia e Medicina dell’Adolescenza 2019: (5) 1-2 :31-49
©Copyright 2019 Adolescentologia Giornale Italiano di Adolescentologia e Medicina dell’Adolescenza
The “Mercury Syndrome” or the smartphone addiction
Giuseppe R. Brera
1
Extended Summary
Different investigation scales like SAS ( Smartphone addiction scale), SAPS (Smartphone Addiction Proneness
Scale), e la KS-scale. (The Korean self-reporting internet addiction short-form scale ), gives evidence to the
existence of a mass of adolescents and young people smartphone-addicted. The prevalence rate is comprehended
between 20-30% of users, with a significant difference between males and females who result more addicted. A
range between 500- 750 milion of persons out of 2 bilion and half smartphone users, comprehends people who
are smartphone and/or internet or internet game addicts or heavy users. At neurological level these addictions
are associated to an extended structural and functional impairment of the orbitofrontal cortex, dorsolateral
prefrontal cortex, anterior right and posterior cingulate cortex, temporo-parietal junction, right auditory cortex to
right motor cortex with a loss of gray and white brain substance. It results in a deficit of cognitive discrimination,
cognitive processing of perceptions and facial empathic expressions, cognitive control of behaviour with
enhancement of impulsivity, impairment of the deep task directed attention and working memory. At
neurochemical level in the anterior cingulate cortex there is an alteration of the Gaba/Glutamate ratio in favour of
Gaba that means the functional loss of integration and regulation of the cognitive neural and emotional network.
The finding of the reduced striatal dopamine receptors in Internet addiction and the abnormal dopamine
regulation of the pre-frontal cortex, gives evidence of the heavy users’ necessity of emotional rewards, with the
impairment of the cognitive control of emotions, due to lesions of the anterior cingulate cortex with errors in the
facial emotion interpretation. In the addicted persons it could provoke aggressive uncontrolled behaviours
because of impulsivity due to an altered function of the frontal-striatal network that is correlated to impulsivity.
It is the neurological basis of the ADHD most frequent disorder in the smartphone addicted persons. At the
affective level, the smartphone heavy user persons more frequently show clinical and sub-clinical depression that
is associated with low self-esteem that they want to compensate with the social networks use. Males seem more
submitted to such dynamic than females who use social networks for self-positive reinforcements and are more
frequently addicted. It is consistent with the BAS score enhancement. Depression in heavy smartphone users finds
its neurological basis on the loss of the frontal-limbic impairment of functions and it relates to the loss of the
anterior cingulate cortex connectivity. At the cognitive level these subjects show a general impairment of higher
cognitive functions: attention, task-directed concentration, working memory and coherent reactions to
environmental stimuli because of the loss of the cognitive skill to discriminate and interpret these. Every day
multitasking internet users exhibit a poorer control over attention and more errors on a task-directed behaviour,
because of the impairment of the ability to ignore distractions that interfere with task completion that is
associated with a higher electric pre-frontal activity, confirming the findings of difficulty in the cognitive control
and cognitive processing. This functional deficit in the frequent multimedia multitasking has been associated with
a grey matter loss in the anterior cingulate cortex, confirming the relation of the functional loss with structural
brain lesions in regions necessary to attention and emotional integration. The sub-cortical balance of interactions,
the loss of cognitive ability to interpret in the right way the interpersonal and symbolic relationship with the
environment and the enhancement of impulsivity , with the necessity of a reinforcement to compensate
depression, explains findings that show the necessity of these subjects to look for a more immediate reward than
to wait for a delayed one and behavioural violent acting-out. They look for instant gratification also of impulsive
1
President of the Italian Society of Adolescence Medicine and WFSA - Director of the Milan School of Medicine
Giornale Italiano di Adolescentologia e Medicina dell’Adolescenza 2019: (5) 1-2 :31-49
©Copyright 2019 Adolescentologia Giornale Italiano di Adolescentologia e Medicina dell’Adolescenza
aggression and sexual drives. This peculiarity is mediated by individual differences in impulsivity but not in
reward/sensation seeking. Academic achievements in multi-tasking users are damaged because of the impairment
of task-directed attention and the cognitive control of executive behaviour also because of vulnerability to
distractor inputs. It is also caused by a deficit of working memory and explicit learning that allows the maintaining
of a goal representation and the memory of cognitive processes to join it. These subjects show only more skills to
adapt a starting attention to different tasks at the same time without the ability to concentrate for realizing one
of these.
The brain and psychological lesions caused by the smartphone heavy use, the internet addiction, the internet
game addiction that gives evidence to a worrying world pandemic, allows to identify a new clinical syndrome that
could be called “ the Mercury syndrome” characterized by a diagnosed smartphone addiction, the frontal-
temporal and anterior cingulate cortex lesions and loss of functions like task-directed attention, working and long
term memory, alterations in executing behaviours and academic performances, depression, anxiety, sleep
disorders, impulsivity . This syndrome could lead to a pandemic of neurodegenerative disorders like frontal-
temporal dementia and Parkinson disease, characterized by atrophy in the anterior cingulate cortex, fronto-insula,
striatum, and amygdala, and loss of the dopaminergic network due to the loss of dopamine receptors, as has been
seen in smartphone and internet addicts. At the phenomenological level the Mercury syndrome allows to identify
a mass of hundred millions of people who lost and are losing the introspective , making meaning and historical
memory skills with an impairment or absence of critical , philosophical , religious and moral thinking with a
lifestyle-oriented only to warrant an impulsive gratification of drives and desires for compensating depression also
in a violent way . These serious problems call for a necessity to preventive actions addressed to fight an uncritical
social adaptation easily controlled and influenced by political and financial powers, marketing and mass media.
The goal of heavy smartphone users is to appear and communicate “on real time” own emotions, requesting for
confirmation by others with an existence centred on an external locus of control. The socio-political consequences
of this human mass decerebration are extremely worrying and present a great risk for the world survival,
because of the opposition to a real democracy where healthy cognitive and affective people could arrive to
political power, in opposition to unhealthy people without possibilities of introspective, moral, philosophical
thinking who, with the internet-based consensus, could control the political power and arrive at it, supported by a
journalism made by the same quality people. This phenomenon presents more complex inducing causes, “in
primis” spiritual, emotional, unconscious factors that support marketing, financial, political social control,
through the Internet and media manipulation of minds, corresponding to a great threat for the human physical
and spiritual survival : the being a human person.
Paper published in Italian