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Shereen Ali
Published:
Monday, May 4, 2015
Baroness Susan Greenfield speaks on the impact of digital technology on our brains at the Bocas Lit Fest lecture held on April 29, at the T&T Chamber of Industry and Commerce building in Westmoorings. PHOTO: ANDRE ALEXANDER
Are computers and cyberspace changing our brains?
In a world of ubiquitous technology, when many youth seem to have a closer relationship with their cellphones, tablets, computers or video games than with their actual flesh-and-blood family and friends, it’s not such a far-fetched question. On April 29, neuroscientist Susan Greenfield talked about precisely this: the impacts of digital technology not only on our behaviour and lifestyles, but also on how our brains themselves (especially children’s young, growing brains) may be affected.
Greenfield, who is a British scientist, writer, broadcaster and member of the House of Lords, was in Trinidad for the Bocas Lit Fest at which she gave a fascinating talk on her recently published book, Mind Change, on Wednesday morning at the T&T Chamber of Industry and Commerce building in Westmoorings.
Published in August 2014 by Random House, Mind Change discusses the all-pervading technologies that now surround us, and from which we derive instant information, connected identity, diminished privacy and exceptionally vivid here-and-now experiences. In Greenfield’s view, these things are creating a new environment with vast implications, because our minds are physically adapting: being rewired.
What could this mean? Are we becoming slaves to the machine? Do we need to take a step back, and learn how to best use digital technologies, before they turn us all into underdeveloped, near-autistic, instant-gratification junkies? How can we use our new technological milieu to create better alternatives and more meaningful lives? These and many other issues were raised in Greenfield’s stimulating hour-long talk.
Humans: the supreme adapters
She began by observing that humans adapt to their environments very well. “Anything you do repeatedly will literally leave its mark on your brain,” she said. Can the mental process of thinking actually change the physical brain itself? She cited a 1995 experiment by Pascual-Leone in which one (control) group of people simply looked at a piano for five days, compared to another group who actually learned to play it a little bit, compared to a third group who just imagined they were playing it.
The first group showed no change in their brain scans. But the last two produced observable and similar changes in scans of their brain activity—with the last group being especially astonishing, she said—suggesting that the more you think (or imagine), the more you can affect or possibly change your own brain activity, and brain growth. It seems the brain is sensitive to not only the external environment, but to anything that happens, or that you are making happen.
“We cannot, cannot, cannot draw a distinction between mental and physical,” said the professor. “Every thought you have, has some kind of physical basis.”
What is thinking?
She asked: “What is thinking, then? What is a mental event?” To answer this, she contrasted a thought with an emotion. She said an emotion often happens in the moment, whereas a thought happens in a sequence of steps, and ends in a different place from where you started. This linear action requires time to complete, she said.
Her answer to “What is thinking?” was a quote from another scientist, who once said: “Thinking is movement confined to the brain.”
Whether a person is learning a musical instrument, juggling, swotting for an exam or learning a new language, their extra mental efforts have actual physical effects on their brains; the branching networks of connections become stronger, thicker and more complex, and you can see this in scans of the brain’s tiny branching networks, she said. By increasing its branches, the brain is increasing its surface area, making it easier for brain cells to communicate with other brain cells, she said.
Greenfield spoke of the temporal linearity of people’s life stories, and posited that your identity is in effect the result of the connections you make in your brain cells as a result of your own unique experiences.
Dangers of too much cyberspace
She said the rich, multifaceted online world was becoming a parallel, even escapist way of living which has the potential to affect children negatively—especially children who spend too much time online instead of taking the time to play, make different kinds of relationships with real people, and exercise their imaginations through diverse activities, including reading.
Real communication in three dimensions is better than screen or two-dimensional communication, she said, because words form only ten per cent of any communication. The rest is communicated through eye contact, body language, voice (tone, rate and volume), pheromones, and physical contact—none of which is available on Facebook, she said. And if you don’t rehearse these aspects of communication, you won’t get good at them, she said.
She then cited a link between poor communication skills and autistic-like behavior in youth—who in today’s world, have a much higher exposure to the internet. She also cited a study where a group of pre-teens had all their digital devices taken away for five days, were taken to an outdoor camp, and saw an improvement in their communication skills as a result. The brain will incessantly adapt, she said.
She made the point that sometimes, when little children make up their own games—even with an old cardboard box—these games are much better than passive screen games, because in the real games, they are exercising their imaginations, and trying on different identities.
Children must learn to think
She said that a whole middle part of development is being skipped—the part that involves learning to actually think—when we simply park children in front of screens.
Violence in videogames can be especially bad, encouraging excessive levels of the chemical dopamine, she said. High dopamine dampens down activity in the pre-frontal cortex, she said. When this part of the brain under-functions, we react emotionally rather than cognitively, she said, going for sensation rather than thought. In video games, we often don’t think, we just react. And the thrill of the moment trumps the consequences of our actions, she said. She noted that the prefrontal cortexes of teenage brains are still developing.
On use of social media, she commented that downloading every second of consciousness onto Twitter or Facebook is not necessarily a good thing, as this form of self-presentation can be narcissistic and leaves us too vulnerable to others’ opinions. She suggested that it can also make for rather shallow negotiations of identity.
Facts are not knowledge
Having access to lots of facts via the internet is not the same as having knowledge, she said, because knowledge involves understanding, and the ability to harness abstract concepts and relate various isolated facts to make useful connections of significance. She even quoted Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, who apparently once said that sitting down and reading a book is the best way to develop understanding and imagination (rather than, say, surfing the net).
Technology, she suggested, should provoke individual fulfilment rather than be a substitute for it. And in a short question and answer session after her talk, she had this simple advice for parents, to counteract all those video games and electronic screens children are exposed to these days: eat together more often as a family; encourage your children to go outside and play; and read often to your children.
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