Strong emotional arousal behind Twitter addiction

A team of researchers from the market research firm Neuro Insight has found that strong emotional arousal is the reason why some users get obsessed with the micro blogging site. They analysed Twitter users' brain activity while they were tweeting to come to a conclusion.

A team of researchers from the market research firm Neuro Insight has found that strong emotional arousal is the reason why some users get obsessed with the micro blogging site, . The researchers used a method that analysed Twitter users' brain activity while they were tweeting to come to this conclusion.

"The way that messages are delivered drives a strong emotional response. It is very short and sharp, it is very immediate and it is appearing in your own context," Heather Armstrong, chief executive of market research firm Neuro Insight, was quoted as saying in a Guardian report.

For the study, researchers examined mental activity of 114 volunteers as they tweeted.

They found higher responses in three brain areas related to emotional arousal, feelings of personal relevance and memory.

The intensity of the emotional arousal was 75 percent higher in people engrossed in tweeting.

Even those who passively read tweets, the response was 64 percent more intense.

Active Twitter use drives 56 percent greater memory encoding than the average website, researchers found.