Sunday, 01 March 2009

  • Is Google Making Our Brains Lazy?


     

    I've pretty much stopped worrying about remembering anything these days because of Google.

    Who needs to remember that obscure movie about revenge with Willem Dafoe?*  I just Google it.

    So does this mean that the Internet is making our brains lazy?

    Actually the opposite is true.

    A new study at the University of California, Los Angeles, indicates that searching the Internet keeps brains agile.

    “Our study shows that when your brain is on Google, your neural circuitry changes extensively,” said psychiatrist Gary Small, director of UCLA’s Memory & Aging Research Center.

    The people studied were 55-76 years old with similar education levels. They were asked to read text on line like a book and to do Internet searches. While doing these tasks their brains were scanned by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment. They were told they would be assessed by their knowledge of the topics they researched.

    The results showed that both text reading and Internet searching stimulated the regions of the brain controlling language, reading, memory and vision.

    Rich sensory experiences

    But the Internet searches stimulated more areas of the brain such as the regions controlling complex reasoning and decision making. This increased brain activity may be due to the many rapid choices that people make when doing Internet searches.  The study suggests that people had a richer sensory experience and heightened attention when they were searching.

    The study was done as research for Small’s book “iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind.”

    The study focused on older people to look at the effects of technology on, what Small refers to as “digital immigrants,” which are people who began using computers later in life than their younger counterparts, called the “digital natives.”

    OK, I admit that I’m a digital immigrant.  But I’m glad to hear that those Google searches are not just making it easier to recall things I need to know, but they are also stimulating my brain.

    *Ohh, the movie I was trying to remember”  It was The Boondock Saints, (1999)




    Is the internet making our brains lazy? Do you try to remember things or just go to Google as soon as possible?

    Guest post written by Ken Currier, of Stuffyourbrainlike.com

Related Posts

Comments (28)

  • Choose Identity

  • Give eProps (?)

  • New! You can now edit your comments for 15 minutes after submitting.