How the Internet Might Better Your Brain

A few weeks ago, I mentioned at the end of a post that multitasking might not be all bad. In fact, certain models of cognitive function (for example, Daniel Dennett's Multiple Drafts Model) make a case for constant multitasking as an essential component of cognition. As Cathy N. Davidson, a professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke says, "On a neuronal level, monotasking doesn't exist." In her new book, Now You See It, Davidson shows how the skills of focusing that we are taught actually lead to "attention blindness," which causes us exclude key information in our surroundings.

The most famous example to illustrate attention blindness is the gorilla experiment. Six people throw basketballs on a screen, three wearing white shirts and three black. Viewers are asked to count the number of passes made by the white-shirted players, ignoring the black. When Davidson participated in the experiment, she was the only one to notice the gorilla that suddenly appeared in the middle of the screen, and only, she says, because she wasn't paying attention and had given up counting. Because focusing our attention involves selection, we ignore ambient "noise" in any situation, but this feature can sometimes lead to missing what a scenario is really about, in this case, the gorilla.

The brain itself works as a network, and so, Davidson sees great potential in the networking nature of modern technology as a supplement to our brains, to counteract some of our own weaknesses. The damage we perceive as caused by the Internet (some of which I have discussed earlier in this blog), she claims, does not actually come from the Internet but rather from the disconnect between the tools we have for learning and working and the ways in which we are taught to learn and work. Rather than containing the changes created in the digital age, we need to modify our daily routines to accommodate and fully utilize them. She lauds innovators like Jane McGonigal (who we read earlier in the course) who find ways to bring digital tools into daily life.

This Amazon preview only has the introduction to the book, but I would highly recommend reading it- it's light and easy, and brings out a fascinating way of looking at the world. For a more informal summary, in this video interview, she describes some of the key points of her argument. Even more informally, here's her blog.

Davidson's view paints a refreshingly optimistic portrait of the changes the Internet is bringing into our minds and our lives, a welcome step away from the sensational doomsday portrayals usually publicized.

Too Much Brain on the Internet

If you look at articles about internet addiction from the early 2000s, you will find skeptical discussions about whether or not it qualifies as a valid psychological disorder. But in our decade, experimentation has conclusively shown that internet addiction is a very real problem of growing concern.

Before I move on, this is a little test to self-diagnose your own susceptibility to become addicted to the internet.

Getting off the internet presents some people with as much of a problem as quitting smoking or drinking. Here's a discussion from the Toronto Sun about the inadequacy of our concern about the increasing rate of addiction. For our generation of digital natives, life without the internet is actually outside the realm of our experience. When internet use becomes excessive to the point where it affects offline relationships and everyday routines, it behaves just as an addiction to substances. As David Foster Wallace might say, an addiction matures when one continues to use despite the fact that using is decreasing one's quality of life. And as the writer of the Toronto Sun article says, addiction is a slippery slope that ends in isolation.

And the signs are less extreme than we might think. You don't have to stay up all night gaming or stress about what's happening on Farmville while you're offline. If you have push notifications from Facebook sent to your smartphone or check your email before doing anything else, even when you actually have work, you might be on your way to an internet addiction. And how many of us in the younger generation don't do those things?

But on the other hand, there's also the danger of over-diagnosis. Especially in America, we have a tradition of looking to medication, in many cases unnecessary, to save us from every little problem. In order to avoid mislabeling people with mental illness, over 5000 psychologists have signed a petition to prevent internet addiction from being added to the list of diagnoses in the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, to be published in 2013.

As the Sun points out, some psychologists tremble at the thought of the tidal wave that might engulf us as internet addiction rates escalate while we haven't fully recognized the problem. Others worry that we might overcompensate because of this fear, leading to other, equal problems. Either way, we all need to examine our own purposes of using the internet and question whether they do justice to the amount of time we spend online. And it's essential to tune out every now and then, exploring the domains of our own thoughts without the static whine of digital noise in the background.

Your Brain on "Training" Games

A bit of a counter to my post a couple weeks ago - this week, a study showed that playing "brain training" computer games could actually have positive effects on a child's academic performance. These games are designed to exercise the child's "working memory," but led to improvement in multiple areas, from reasoning to problem solving.

In fact, Nintendo has begun using their new genre of brain training games as a marketing strategy for the new 3ds platform. As this review reflects, these games appeal to a widely varied audience, opening up new markets for video game makers - brain training games have proved useful in many populations, from toddlers to Alzheimer's patients.

Your Brain on Social Networks

Two days ago, on October 21, researchers from University College London published a study showing a link between the size of one's social network and the structure of certain areas of the brain.

From the article's abstract: "quantitative variation in the number of friends an individual declares on a web-based social networking service reliably predicted grey matter density in the right superior temporal sulcus, left middle temporal gyrus and entorhinal cortex." These regions have all been previously associated with social functions. The right superior temporal sulcus shows up often in autism studies due to its role in perception. The left middle temporal gyrus helps in reading social cues, and the entorhinal cortex works with memory navigation.

Social network size was gauged by a series of self reported questions asked to a sample of 125 university students in London, students of a generation that grew up with the Internet. fMRIs documented the brain structures. Increased gray matter density in the amygdala, an emotional center, was directly linked to having a large online network, while the other regions mentioned showed an increase related to both real life and virtual networks.

However, the study does not establish causality. It only determined the existence of a link, but cannot say whether the social activity leads to the increased density or whether people born with a variations in those brain regions are more likely to exhibit the corresponding behaviors documented in the study. So, an important next step will be to see whether the structures change over time and continued interaction over social networks...which will help to answer the question of whether the Internet is actually changing our brains.

Media perspectives on the study: from BBC,  DigitalSpy, Afro, the PowerRetail Blog, and Times Colonist - a wide range of genres.

The last of the above links shows Oxford Pharmacologist Baroness Susan Greenfield pontificating about social implications of the study that she finds disturbing. She cites other studies that show a link between the changed brain structures and attention and behavior problems. And the kicker - evidence of decreased empathy in adolescents who frequent online social networks. She tells the story of a 15-year-old girl who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend to win a bet discussed on Facebook. Dozens of people saw the posts and knew of his attentions, but did nothing - a Chronicle of a Death Foretold situation. And just as that novel demands, for this incident, too, we have to ask the question of whether the society at large should be held as responsible as the homicidal boyfriend.

Greenfield comes to the conclusion that the root of the empathy problem lies in the weakened link between action and consequence in online forums. She invokes the Greeks and wonders how they would piece this development in with their frequent analyses of the human condition.

In my opinion, the study poses a number of incredibly rich questions without easy answers, that experts will continue to bat around as interpretations flow in. But I agree with Greenfield that the situation requires continual and expanded study and monitoring. As she suggests, it's not something we can wait around 10 or 20 years to analyze when the brains in question have grown up. These are the people who have the world in their hands, so the question becomes one of not just the human condition, but our responsibility for the caretaking of our species and the environment surrounding us.

Young Brains on the Internet

Today, I will focus specifically on children and how Internet use affects their developing brains.

In the reading for my CS47N class (the one that this blog is for) today, game designer Jane McGonigal discussed the increasing divide between schooling methods and children's needs in this generation that has grown up with the constant mental engagement of the digital world. She approached the topic from the point of view of a sociocultural phenomenon, a shift that has occurred along with the cultural changes brought by new technology. But more recently, researchers have examined the biological basis of this shifting attitude, giving a whole new meaning to the term "digital native." Has use of the Internet from an early age actually caused the brains of today's children and adolescents to be wired differently? This past week, the media have had a lot to say on this question.

On the negative side, child advocate Jim Adler argues that Internet use may be giving kids ADD. The pervasive presence of alluring updates across the scope of the Internet - gaming, social networking, media updates - makes it difficult for them to focus in the real world. CNN backs him up, calling the phenomenon "popcorn brain." The constant stimulation provided while using the internet activates dopamine in the nucleus accumbens, one of the main pleasure centers of the brain. They also cite a study conducted in China showing that students who spent over 10 hours a day on the Internet had significantly less gray matter - the component of the brain that does the thinking.

On a more positive note, Christopher Chabris, a psychology professor, argues in the New York Times that the popcorn phenomenon speaks to the plasticity of the brain and untapped cognitive capabilities. Yes, Internet use stimulates dopamine receptors in a manner similar to cocaine use, but a "revolutionary" experiment conducted at the NIH showed that monkeys (and presumably humans by extension) got a "buzz" from extra information, all else equal. Chabris argues that this experiment shows that "the Internet doesn’t change our brains at all, for good or for ill." It doesn't destroy or modify anything, but just stimulates the already existing reward pathways. This attitude fits right in with McGonigal's pitch for a society centered around the advantages of gaming and its exposure of untapped intellectual capability.


Lastly for today, a little informal mythbusting from Huffington Post. 
1. The Internet doesn't negatively affect memory. It just makes memorizing unnecessary and tedious. As she puts it, tools like the Internet "allow us to replace one kind of mental effort with another."
2. The Internet hasn't decreased concentration ability. The younger generation just has different tastes. Case in point: Harry Potter. Kids display a remarkable ability to concentrate on that long and complex storyline. I wonder what Jim Adler would have to say to that.
3. Young people's multitasking isn't all bad. Or, at least, other sources of distraction unrelated to technology cause far more harm.


The debate is far from over, and the research far from complete. Scientists have only just taken a few spoonfuls from the bowl of possibilities for ways our extensive use of the Internet could affect developing brains.


One last laugh - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXV-yaFmQNk

First Thoughts

I'm sure many of you have heard of the PDFA poster "This is your brain on drugs."This poster predated the advent of the Internet into mainstream culture. Of course, the Internet has many legitimately useful features, but people can form addictions to Internet use, continuing to use excessively despite detrimental effects to their quality of life, similar to a drug addiction. My interest, here, is to answer the question, "What does your brain look like on the internet?"

In the past couple years, neurologists have shown a growing interest in the cognitive changes effected by internet use, focusing on the physical effects on a person's brain. This discussion from NPR examines the toll taken by information overload and "technology juggling." Specifically, a sample of individuals deprived of their gadgets for three days reported significant positive results in terms of their stress levels and pace of life. Streaming information makes it difficult for the brain to filter relevant information, as shown by a study right here at Stanford.

fMRI analyses show the acceleration of physical wear and tear on the brain caused by "tech overload," a very real problem documented by the thousand. Excessive attachment to technology creates difficulties in being present in the moment, as discussed in this New York Times article. Also, studies have shown that productivity decreases significantly when multitasking, a practice greatly increased by technology use.

These are just a few tidbits of the type of discussions to come on this blog!