For the past two decades, I've been developing advanced technologies to help us understand how the brain functions and changes over time. My group at UCLA invented a brain scanning technique that can detect the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease decades before people experience obvious symptoms. And we continue to develop new technologies to better understand the workings of the brain and how it ages.
The idea to write iBrain stemmed from my curiosity about how the increasing presence of new technologies - PDAs, laptop computers, iPods, e-mail, video games, virtual social networking, and other advancements, were affecting our brains. Knowing how sensitive the brain is to sensory stimulation from moment to moment, I wondered about the effects of this constant tech exposure - especially on young brains, which were still being formed and creating their basic neural pathways.
The average young person spends nearly nine hours each day using some type of technology. And often it is so new that their parents don't use it nor understand it. We are witnessing the traditional generation gap transform into a brain gap. And this brain gap separates digital natives, young people born into a worlds of 24/7 technology, and digital immigrants, those of us who came to computers and digital technology as adults. I knew that technology was clearly changing our lives, but how was it changing our brains?
I enlisted my UCLA research group, and we began a study on the brain's neural circuitry response to a simple task such as searching the Internet. We recruited middle-aged volunteers with similar backgrounds, where half had experience searching the Internet, while the other half had no experience. As they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scans (MRIs), study participants performed both book-reading tasks and Web searches.
The MRIs revealed that all the volunteers showed similar brain activity during the book-reading task in regions controlling vision and language, but Internet searches revealed a major difference between the two groups. The Web-savvy group registered much greater activity throughout the brain, especially in the frontal areas that control decision-making and complex reasoning, than the other group with no computer experience.
These results suggest that computer technologies may have physiological effects on our brains and potential benefits for middle-aged and older adults. Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function. Compared with normal reading, the Internet's wealth of choices requires that people make decisions about what to click on in order to pursue more information, an activity that exercises important cognitive circuits in the brain. Also, searching the Web appears to enhance brain circuitry in older adults, demonstrating that our brains are remain flexible and can continue to learn as we grow older. For example, e-mail has become a crucial means of communication for all ages.
iBrain argues that new technology can have both positive and negative effects on our brains. Digital natives tend to have greater multi-tasking skills, improved peripheral vision and higher efficiency using technology. However Digital Immigrants appear to have more advanced people skills - better face to face contact, more ability to solve problems, work in groups, and express empathy. iBrain offers techniques to bridge the brain gap by upgrading the tech skills of Digital Immigrants and improving the face-to-face social skills of Digital Natives.
Consider if your current use of technology is enhancing your life, or do you need to cut back on your tech time and keep a more human perspective on things?
Gary Small
Los Angeles, CA
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Comments: 13
I received your book to review and I am reading it now. This is pretty interesting stuff.
I wish I'd had the kind of connectivity as a young person that I have now. When you grow up in a small town and don't connect with many people, it's isolating. Now I know, through the magic of the internet, that I'm not the freak they thought I was. My people are out there!
I'm glad you're finding iBrain interesting. Gigi and I look forward to your review.
Most of us are not addicted to the technology, but it does have a lure that tends to pull us in. The pace of tech innovation is a challenge. We recently got a new laptop and had to adapt to Windows Vista. Although it was annoying to have to learn yet another program, we could see the practical advantages, and it’s good for our brains to update as well. The social connectivity is great – we appreciate your writing in.
BUT our brains are not changing and probably would need at lest a century of the pressures and changes put upon us to SHOW any change. Though a VERY FEW people do know what the brain is like and what it can do, we still only employ from 5% to 10% of its abilities an capacities.
The LAST big burst of TECHNOLOGY of the type we are discussing took place with the Gutenberg press and the creation of movable type and printing presses. That opened an extraordinary possibility for the unwashed and unlettered to learn about everything.(1554) including washing themselves.
If thre had not been the revolution in printing, SHAKESPEARE would not exist to day.
BUT, remeber that the CHINESE had priniting and 'books' (scrolls) four thousand years before us, but somehow the Brain Wave did not reach the brains of Europe and our world until Gutenberg.
I am in sense a 'neurological psycholinguist" with much study of the brain's affects and effects throughout my life.
If we want to REALLY KNOW what kinds of effect technology will have and is having on our brains, the (deceased in 1969) genius WILDER PENFIELD(neurologist) knew the answers.
IF we get movers and shakers like Bll Gates in the realm of neurology and medicine, and apply our new knowledge of the brains function and in particular the knowledge of Wilder Penfield, we may LOCK computer technology into all of the functions of our brain for the good of it.
I am a living incidence of a minor application...stymied for years by deafness froma WWII bomb explosion, modern technology eventually brought me useful hearing and enble me to re-enter the complexities of intellectualism.
Much more is possible if my younger colleagues get off their butts and get to their creation.
It is clearly positive that we can connect so efficiently through social networks, email, texting, etc., but the negative side is that we lose the subtle aspects of face-to-face communication (non-verbal cues, facial expressions, eye contect, etc.). This all may change as tech-communication innovation advances. We may eventually have video conferencing that creates virtual images that are indistinguishable from real images -- but that's still in the future.