This is your brain on ..... the Internet?

In the heyday of the 1980's a public service announcement by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America launched a profound ad. The "This is Your Brain on Drugs" ad made a simple point, drugs can destroy your brain. This PSA was launched during the height of the "Just Say No to Drugs" campaign, and perhaps a similar campaign should begin today. While not going after drugs, there is something that is a daily part of most people's lives that is potentially negativity altering their brains. This scourge can be found in public libraries, schools, workplaces, and even in a growing number of Americans pockets. What may be frying people's brains is the Internet and other new social technologies.

In a piece titled "Your Brain vs Technology: How our wired world is changing the way we think" by Natasha Lomas, the effects of informational techonology on the human brain is investigated. One Study examined makes the case clear: "Our results suggested that long-term internet addiction would result in brain structural alterations, which probably contributed to chronic dysfunction in subjects with IAD [internet addiction disorder]" Susan Greenfield, professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford, explaining such research highlights that there is are not necessarily good or bad findings from this research, but that the effects are changing our modes of socialization. As Dr. Greenfield explains "The human brain is so exquisitely adapted to be perfectly adapted to whatever environment it's in. If it's in an environment where it communicates mainly with computers, it too will become like a computer - with both the good and bad things [associated with that]." 

Another recent study, examined the effects of users memory if they believed that they would be able to find information online. The conclusion found that "the internet has become a primary form of external or trans active memory, where information is stored collectively outside ourselves." Basically, why remember something when all you have to do is remember how to find it. This change in memory behavior is certainly a newer phenomena. Combined with Dr. Greenfield's research it would be simple to say the times are changing the way we live and think.


Dr Paul Howard-Jones, senior lecturer in education at the University of Bristol, relays a different message. "Whenever we learn, there are changes that occur in our brains - the brain is plastic - and I think a lot of the concerns we have when we find out that things are rewiring our brains arise from a misconception that our brain is in many respects hardwired." Dr. Howard-Jones goes on to note that while technology may be changing the way our brains work it's not necessarily a bad thing, "So, yes, using the internet rewires our brains. Should we be concerned? No, I don't think so. All experience, when it becomes a learning experience, rewires our brains to some extent." 


As time marches on, and technology continues to change our daily lives, the impacts may not be negative. At the same time, there is a clear indication that using modern technologies will have some impact on the way a human brain functions. Brain to egg analogy: Scrambled or fried, something is happening to our neurological systems and informational technology is the one doing the cooking.

Sources in order of use
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FtNm9CgA6U
http://www.silicon.com/technology/hardware/2011/11/10/your-brain-vs-technology-how-our-wired-world-is-changing-the-way-we-think-39747925/2/
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0020708
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6043/776