Feeling stupider? Maybe because you use your phone while watching TV

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A new study has revealed that using multiple gadgets at the same time is bad for your brain and can even lower your IQ.

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen believe that using multiple gadgets can be "worse than being stoned" for the brain, the Daily Star reported.

Research shows that switching between your smartphone, computer and TV releases a hormone dopamine that breaks the brain down in the same way as being high on drugs and also trains your brain to be disorganised.

When a person focuses on one thing at a time, his brain stores the information in the hippocampus, the library of the brain where data is organised and categorised so that it's easy to remember, but when he uses multiple gadgets the information is sent to another part of the brain, the striatum.

This area of the brain plans movements and motivation instead of storing data, so anything it takes in is much harder to recall and so doing this too often dramatically rewires the brain to store information in the wrong place.

Researchers said that use of technology in everyday lives is damaging the brain, causing it to rewire itself and lowering our IQ as a result, adding that brain could be heading for the scrap heap.

The study asked people to use their tablet or smartphone while watching a TV programme and tested how many things they could think about at once.

Most said they felt "productive and efficient" after using multiple devices, but only half of them could actually remember what had been on TV.