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In Brief
- The brain’s plasticity—its ability to change in response to stimuli from the environment—is well known. What has been less appreciated is how the expanding use of technology is shaping neural processing.
- Young people are exposed to digital stimulation for several hours every day, and many older adults are not far behind.
- Even using a computer for Web searches for just an hour a day changes the way the brain processes information. A constant barrage of e-contacts is both stimulating—sharpening certain cognitive skills—and draining, studies show.
You’re on a plane packed with other businesspeople, reading your electronic version of the Wall Street Journal on your laptop while downloading files to your BlackBerry and organizing your PowerPoint presentation for your first meeting when you reach New York. You relish the perfect symmetry of your schedule, to-do lists and phone book as you notice a woman in the next row entering little written notes into her leather-bound daily planner. You remember having one of those ... What? Like a zillion years ago? Hey, lady! Wake up and smell the computer age. You’re outside the airport now, waiting impatiently for a cab along with dozens of other people. It’s finally your turn, and as you reach for the taxi door a large man pushes in front of you, practically knocking you over. Your briefcase goes flying, and your laptop and BlackBerry splatter into pieces on the pavement. As you frantically gather up the remnants of your once perfectly scheduled life, the woman with the daily planner book gracefully steps into a cab and glides away.
The current explosion of digital technology not only is changing the way we live and communicate but also is rapidly and profoundly altering our brains. Daily exposure to high technology—computers, smart phones, video games, search engines such as Google and Yahoo—stimulates brain cell alteration and neurotransmitter release, gradually strengthening new neural pathways in our brains while weakening old ones. Because of the current technological revolution, our brains are evolving right now—at a speed like never before.
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1 Comments
Add CommentWell maybe its just going to make us more effecient at communicating,We will start to understand perception of others as we gather knowledge.Communities will be made via internet and like history shows us once a community is made and the window of knowledge and understanding is closed,we have todays society.Seems to me that our brain can advance but if we lose sight of the heart it really wont matter.Put it this way a vendetta via internet,this culture against another.To avoid problems as that is to simply avoid labels,as christianity says NO MALE NOR FEMALE,JEW OR GENTILE,BLACK OR WHITE(added by a follower of love) ect. The point is to bear with one another and to spread love and seek to connect and make bonds.Not to outcast others and seeing them as "sinners" or "cursed" and wishing them death.The point is that thought we may be triggering diff. parts of our brain what really will remain is the heart which is what we all hope to share and make a community in the whole world.THe perfect community,no rich or poor just a family member helping the other which is not based on blood line but via internet connection.
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